Tell It Like It Is

Sunday 28 January 2007

From A Friend In Seminary : Meaning/Purpose Questionnaire

A friend of mine studying archeology at seminary wrote a short questionnaire to help with one of her assignments. I found the questions particularly interesting, and enjoyed answering them, and you might enjoy them too. Her questions are in bold; my answers in italics...


Hi E.

I liked your questions. I don't know how useful you'll find my answers. I'm afraid they may appear terribly "trite" and "Christianese", as if I'd answered how I'm supposed to answer, but not as I truly feel.

But rest assured, my friend, that these answers are as true as the blue sky. If it makes me a freak, that I believe what I'm supposed to and know why I believe it, then a freak I'll glady be. :o)



Q : Where do you find your meaning?
A : Pleasure is pointless, pain is pointless, happiness is pointless, sadness is pointless, being good to others is pointless, being mean to others is pointless, LIFE is pointless, DEATH is pointless, except that The Unchanging One finds pleasure in us, and except that our souls are eternal and the effects of our actions now will echo in our ears forever.



Q : What do you find fulfillment in, purpose in, a reason for living in?
A : Bringing a smile to God's heart. And teaching others to do the same.



Q : What gets you up in the morning and keeps you going throughout the day?
A : The knowledge that what I'm doing is significant, not because it will merely transcend my lifetime, but because it will have good effects that last for eternity.

In contrast, Humanists can gain some mild level of satisfaction in knowing that some good they do to another will transcend their lifetime, but Humanism is ultimately a religion of despair, for no matter how advanced Humanity becomes, it will ultimately die in the inescapable Big Collapse that, by the laws of physics, must eventually follow a Big Bang. That kind of 'legacy', which transcends one's lifetime but ultimately comes to nothing, is pointless.

What keeps me going is the knowledge that the good I do won't be eventually obliterated in an inescapable cosmic smash-up, but will actually endure without cessation. I am not writing in chalk on a chalkboard that will be wiped clean in a few billion years; I am etching in stone that will last forever. And I have learned from the Supreme Artist how to etch well.



Q : What gives you hope?
A : Eternal perpetuity of our souls and of the consequences of our works is a depressing thought if our souls are miserable and our works reprehensible.

HOPE comes not from understanding eternity, but from knowing that The Unchanging One has adopted my soul and cradles it in His love, and so orchestrates my circumstances as to help me grow and cause me good.



Q : What makes you grin like an idiot?
A : When my attempts at subtlety are foiled. The Great One dealt me a scant measure of subtlety, the which I rarely employ, and when I do, it's usually to disastrous consequence! :o)

I could give numerous humorous examples, but it's irrelevant to the questionnaire and my time, like my subtlety, is scant. :o)

And yes, I can see how this question applies to "meaning & purpose" for some folk, but I don't think it does for me.



Q : Where do you find your meaning and purpose?
A : "Meaning" I've already answered. "Purpose" - perhaps my three life goals are relevant. In order of importance, most important first, my three life goals, with me from the cradle to my grave, are as follows :

1) To delight God.
2) To obtain wisdom.
3) To lay up treasure in Heaven.


So, what answers would you have given? I'm curious to know - drop a line or leave a comment! :o)

Energy Is Free, Perpetual Motion Is Fallacious, Steorn Should Not Release Their Findings

UPDATE Mon 26-Feb-2007 : The Verbose Philosopher Recants. The following article no longer reflects the Verbose Philosopher's views.

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." The diligent student identifies two consequences of this law :

1) There is an unalterable universal centre of mass;
2) Energy can be created at will;

The first of these two conclusions is tenuous, based on the assumption that matter and energy cannot be cross-converted.

The second of these conclusions is laughable, defying the law of the conservation of energy.

However, the second of these conclusions is easily demonstrated. Indeed, energy can be created at will.

The implications are staggering, but not as staggering as you might first expect.

Theoretically, if the universe evolved from a big bang (which it clearly did not), then it will end in a huge smash-up. This is an inevitable consequence of gravity's infinite reach and unrelenting pull. If we can create energy at will, surely humans could create a spacecraft to propel themselves in opposition to the force of gravity, and thus escape the doom. But free energy cannot create propulsion without reaction mass. "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." You can create all the energy you want, but you can't use that energy to go somewhere without flinging fuel, exhaust, parts of the spacecraft, or other expendibles out the back of your craft. Sooner or later, these fleeing humanoids will run out of reaction mass and join the giant squish soup that the universe will become.

So free energy does not mean unlimited propulsion, nor escape from ultimate doom.

That said, free energy does change a lot of things.

I first came upon the principles of free energy in my teenage years - roughly ten years ago. I am the only person I know of in the entire world claiming to understand the principles behind it. However, I am not the only person in the world claiming to be able to demonstrate it with ease.

Every now and then I check up on the web to see if anyone else has discovered the obvious - the inescapable conclusion of Newton's law of momentum - the ability to create energy at will.

Of course, there are ten kadzillion "PMM (Perpetual Motion Machine) Enthusiasts". Some of them are tantalizingly close, yet frustratingly far, from the obvious. It's kind of amusing to see their designs, and their almost religious dedication to perpetual motion. Some of them mighty close, but they're missing some mighty obvious principles that are sitting just under their nose.

For starters, let me make it abundantly clear : "free energy" is NOT "perpetual motion". PMM enthusiasts often confuse the creation of energy and the creation of movement. "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Machines designed to levitate and fly around, unaffected by environment, atmosphere, or gravitation, are an impossibility. And that is relatively simple to demonstrate with maths.

But energy - the ability to create abundant truck-loads of energy, at-will - that's simple, and again, very easy to demonstrate with maths.

So what is it that PMM enthusiasts are missing? I could tell you. Let's say #1 it is obvious; and #2 it is a fairly direct consequence of the particular Newtonian law I keep harping on about in this article. The diligent student can discover the rest, as have I.

But perhaps the principles have already been discovered. Only in the last hour or so I stumbled across Steorn, a company in Ireland which claims to have accidently found an arrangement of magnets by which they can produce unlimited power.

Check it out yourself : http://www.steorn.net/en/technology.aspx?p=5.

Curiously, they stumbled across it by accident, and only a few years ago, whereas I 'discovered' it in the search for it, and about ten years ago.

I am presuming here that they are as good as their claim. And I won't be surprised if they are.

What's interesting is that they stumbled across it, and have no explanation for it. Well, until this day, I thought I was the only person who both knew how to do it and understood the physics of it. Perhaps I am no longer the only one who knows how to do it, but it does sound like I'm still the only one who understands the physics of it.

It all ties in very neatly to cosmology, one of my myriad favourite topics, and it was partly to outlay a proper framework for understanding the free energy phenonemon that I commenced writing my series of articles on Biblical Cosmology.

Yes friends, energy is there for the taking. It can be done with magnets. It can be done without magnets. It can be done with any attractive or repulsive force, including gravity, magnetism, pressurised liquids, and probably even springs and other elastic materials. It can possibly even be done with centrifugal force.

The key is so simple that I would only have to say a few words, and those frustrated students so diligently seeking the elusive would, with a little further thought, see it for themselves.

So why will I not utter the magic words?

Simple. I think it 90% likely that Steorn have, as they claim, stumbled across a practical way of easily creating energy out-of-nothing. Now, I understand the cosmological implications, the theological implications, and the likely sociological implications of this. Let me say, free energy is not the ultimate panacea it may initially appear. I've been sitting on the secret myself for these many years, for the simple reason that a rapid proliferation of free energy generators is not actually in humankind's best interests. In the event that Steorn proves mistaken, it will be better that the secret remains just that - a secret.

"What great dangers lie in so great a power?", you ask, incredulous and indignant. I chuckle to myself and think "Poor fools - they don't even understand the physics of it and yet they assume it's 'clean, green, and beneficial'".

However, the skeptic will not be sated be the mere claim of good reasons for the non-proliferation of this technology. And so I will give a partial reason here. A full discussion of the several problems requires disclosure of the operating principles, something I am not willing to engage in here and now. So please excuse me for only giving details of one part of one of my significant concerns, as follows :

Energy is easily created and introduced to the globe. What then? It is employed for propulsion, manufacturing, or by some other means, ultimately resulting in a net increase in the heat on the surface of the earth.

Consider it : if every house had a free-energy-generator out-the-back, and ran all the lights all day, and left all appliances and computers running at all times, and stopped worrying about energy ratings for refrigerators, washing machines, fans, etc, and if industry went bananas with unlimited supplies of power, guess what? We would rapidly (and somewhat irreversibly) increase the surface temperature of the earth.

So much more can be said on this topic, but I refrain. If Steorn prove to actually have discovered the technology, and a practical model becomes widely known, then with some dissappointment I will be more willing to ellucidate the world with the underpinning physics, and a fuller discussion of the dangers of this technology.

But if - as I hope, but doubt, will be the case - Steorn is yet another of the also-rans, convinced of success but sincerely mistaken, I will happily return to my Hobbit-hovel and mind my own business.

Related links :

Steorn website

A video interview with Steorn

UPDATE Mon 29-Jan-2007 : I've run through some maths, calculating the amount of thermal energy received on an ongoing basis from the sun, and concluded that, even with a 100-fold increase in global power consumption, and replacing all existing electrical power generation plants with 'free energy' devices, we would be adding energy to the earth at a rate WELL UNDER 0.1% of that added by the sun. In short : I no longer hold that the Steorn device risks overheating the earth. I continue to have other reservations with the technology - I still continue to think it best for humankind if Steorn prove mistaken - but unfortunately I must leave that as an unsupported opinion in the public eye.

Wednesday 3 January 2007

Middle School Girls Gone Wild

I just read this very interesting editorial on the New York Times entitled "Middle School Girls Gone Wild".

What American schools are doing, and American parents allowing and encouraging, is truly disgusting. It's easy for me as an Aussie to say "We're much better than the Americans". Right? Wrong!

I do part-time volunteer teaching at one of the state primary schools near my home in Melbourne, Australia. I and all the other volunteer teachers were invited to come to the annual school concert towards the end of last year.

Now, this happens to be the very primary school which I attended as a kid. (Until I started homeschooling, that is.) I remember fondly the many school concerts in which I took part as a child, and the various costumes I wore and parts I played.

One year I was a farmer, complete with overalls and a big cardboard raincloud which I held up with a stick. The cloud even had a yellow lightening bolt descending from it! :o) Ah - those were the days.

Another year I was a mad scientist, and we still have photos of the dusty grey hair effect we rather successfully pulled-off with copious doses of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder. (Talcum powder.) :o)

Only fifteen to twenty years have passed, and here I am, looking forward to nostalgic reminders of years gone by as I watched this performance in my childhood school.

And what do I see?

Lots of veeery skimpy femmes.

I'm talking about my grade 3, 4 and 5 students, many in bikinis and other sexually-alluring attire. And ah - parading it, too. Not "cute" sexy, as in "my parents put this on me and I'm getting lots of attention so I think it's fun", but "I know this clothing is sexy and I'll act sexy too whilst I wear it".

Oh, there were plenty of girls who were well-attired, and a few who, despite scant clothing, were oblivious to sexual overtones. But if say 10% to 20% of the girls were sexy & lovin' it - at that tender age - struttin' their stuff in public, proudly to a packed auditorium of many hundreds of parents and siblings... It doesn't bode well for where things are heading in society.

In other words : things aren't as bad in Australia as they are in America - yet. But we're well on the way.

I have written before and at length regarding a proper Christian response to the fabric-reductionism prevelant in society, and curiously, the one common thread (pardon the pun) across all replies I've had so far, is that there is no common thread.

The nearest thing to a helpful suggestion was one young lass suggesting I read Jeff Pollard's "Christian Modesty and the Public Undressing Of America". Well, I happened upon this book at a Vision Forum book table in Virginia USA in July 2006, and now possess a copy, and will read it eventually, I suppose, but have been discouraged by a review of it which said that Jeff only addresses the issues in broad and ill-defined brush strokes.

In dealing with these issues, vague statements and generalisations are not enough, and if you don't understand what I'm talking about, read my "Free Porn With Your Metcard" article on 100thousandyouth. (For our non-Melbourne readers, "trams" are the prevalent mode of public transport here, and "Metcards" are the tickets you buy to ride the trams.)

Yes, our society is highly sexualised, and yes, it is a problem. Step 1) Wake up. Step 2) Rediscover Biblical ideals. Step 3) Live them. Step 4) Help those around you do the same.

And somewhere along the line, for the sake of our children, step 5) Formalise Scriptural principles in legislation, so the wishes of the minority who profit financially from fuelling lust, cannot be freely imposed on those who wish a lifestyle of longer-term satisfaction.