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This was just too good not to be posted. it’s actually more sad than funny but I cannot help but laugh. I just feel sorry for his parents.
Before you read following article let me remind you of a quote.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. ~ Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics

Now read following article:

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) A teen accused of plotting to blow up his high school told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus, federal authorities said Tuesday. Read full story here…

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Some people crave winning a lottery, spending a night with Angelina Jolie, while some of them go as far as wanting to become a rock star even though they have musical ear of a water bucket. I on the other hand have very simple requests. Here’s a short (but not complete) list:

I crave:

• working wheels on the Wal-Mart shopping carts.
• more than one register opened at Wal-Mart stores.
• “Origins Of Species” in hotel drawers instead of holy book.
• waiters not to interrupt my conversation every time they ask everything ok?
• working remote control in hotel rooms.

And that’s all.

I am sure this is not a new joke, but it’s funny nonetheless.

A nine year old boy asks his mother, “Is God male or female?”
After thinking for a moment, his mother responds, “Well God is both male and female.”
This confuses the boy, so he asks, “Is God black or white?”
“Well,” she says, “God is both black and white.”
This really confuses the boy, so he asks, “Is God gay or straight?”
Feeling a bit out of her depth, but wanting to be consistent, the mother answers, “Honey, God is both gay and straight.”
At this the boy’s face lights up with understanding and he triumphantly asks… Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a true lesson in critical thinking and common sense. This is how is done. Period.

This article will explore my own observation if capitalism really works or not. Famous saying is that capitalism brings prosperity and wealth to the people. Lets see if that’s really true. I’ve lived in Europe for 20 years and currently am living in U.S for 13 years. That gives me objective perspective on economic conditions from the layman’s point of view.
Here’s a startling fact: Currently most of the worlds countries are one or another form of capitalist economies; and most of the world is poor. That’s a fact. Those who resort to no welfare and social programs usually have greatest class divides and poorest standards of living. Some of those countries are: India, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Russia, Brazil etc..

Let’s see simple example of capitalist economy in action.
In a capitalist economy, labor (working class) is working for the owner (capitalist class) to produce goods. Labor is selling their work abilities in return for wages. With those earned wages, labor goes out and consumes products of their own making, but at much higher price. For example: A person who labors in a production factory could make 200 products an hour, lets say of 1$ per product ; but I guarantee you that he is not getting paid $200 an hour. In an 8 hour shift he can make as much as 1600 products. That’s $1,600 worth of products while taking home (before tax and all deductions)maybe $100 a day, if he’s paid really well. So, he will earn his day pay in about half an hour. He also cannot just stop working once he reaches $100 a day in products; which is within half an hour. But it doesn’t end there. He will then go out and buy some of those products at much higher price. Owners are the only ones who truly benefit. Labor will just survive and have a big choice of products to consume. Not much more. If laborer complains or demands higher wages, he will be immediately replaced by another one waiting in line who will work longer hours for less pay. Capitalist class knows this, and they’re counting on it. That’s called exploiting working class, but I could be wrong.
Let’s look at the United States.
Let me first say that U.S is not a pure capitalist economy. U.S used to be pure capitalist economy 100 year or so ago, and guess what? U.S was considered a third world country at that time. Things have changed since then, but only on the surface, and only thanks to working people who fought for their rights. If capitalists had their way, U.S would still be a third world country.
U.S has now what’s called mixed economy. It’s based on profits but some of the things are regulated. In a true capitalist economy you would not have: Medicaid, Social Security, Labor Unions, workers rights, child labor laws, affirmative action, welfare and other socialized institutions. In capitalist economy everything is privatized and people work for wealthy few who own most of the industries. And I mean everything! Pure capitalism can be illustrated by simple picture like this:

Simple but it’s worth thousand words.

Even though U.S has mixed economy, the whole system is still based on making profits; lots of it. That’s one of the core attributes of capitalism. Every business of course strives for huge profits, but even institutions you would not expect are also in competition to make huge bucks. Media cares about ratings; big ratings bring big bucks from advertisers. Hospitals and the whole health care industry are also striving to make profit for their shareholders. Doctors are accepting large amounts of patients to maximize their bonuses and salaries. (They also accept vacation packages from the drug industries in return for testing few drugs on their patients). FED (Federal Reserve System which is privately owned) are lending money to business, while making huge profits of interest which businesses pay back. Even our government is trying to make profit. I dare you to find me an industry that works for good of the people, instead for profit.
In capitalist society, profit comes before people, education, health, environment and other life’s basic necessities. Oil companies will drill in the wild if it makes them profit. Lumber companies will cut down the whole forests if thats the only way for them to grow and make profit. In the US we indeed see all of this even though it’s not a true capitalist economy; it’s much more subtle but damaging to the people nonetheless.
If business grows to the size, where the only way to sustain itself and make profits is to start hitting work force on their backs, while passing costs to consumers (notice work force and consumers are the same people actually), while at the same time destroying competition at any cost, they will do it; we see them doing it every day.
Average American is then pushed into the corner. He has to compete with his fellow Americans for a better job and better pay, so that he can pay his mortgage, send his kids to school, buy health and life insurance, secure his retirement and basically just survive. Who has time for fun! He has no choice. He will often resort to stumping over his morals and ethics just to get one step ahead. Good people will resort to all kind of innovative ways to make money and survive. We see that in all kinds of scams around us.
He is also constantly bombarded by media and reminded by employer (capitalist class) that giving 110% at work and not complaining a lot is the best way to get ahead. Those who complain get fired really quick and get replaced by other ambitious laborers. Be competitive and have good work ethics and everything will work out they say. Add to that, constant avalanche of consumer products being shoved up his butt, and what you got here is a obedient consumer/worker robot. That’s a person who works as hard as he can, while consumes as much as he can while keeping his mouth shut. Not a bad deal for the capitalist class eh?
If working class is just working and not buying, then whole system breaks down. Opposite is also true. So capitalist class needs obedient worker whol will also consume lots of its products.
Capitalist class these days have yet another weapon to maximize their profits. Offshoring and globalization. Owners will abandon their already overworked and underpaid local labor in return for cheaper and even more overworked labor overseas. Any way you look at it, average American will get short end of the stick every day and twice on the Sunday; and the only thing he really wants is little piece of mind; or as it’s popularly called American Dream.
Every person in US strives for that piece of mind that will never come. It’s a never ending struggle between anxiety and labor, until the day he dies. He just doesn’t know it while he’s in his 30’s or 40’s.
Even if he’s on the right track of fullfiling that dream, something else along the way always comes, just to set him back or place him right back at the beginning. It’s like running in the sand. A true checkmate. Even if he accumulates material goods, anxiety will always be there.
Lets say he has million dollars saved by the time he retires; he’s feeling good and has all these travel plans; but what he doesn’t realize is that all it takes, for him (or a family member) to get really sick and all of that could be wiped out by medical treatments, and if he doesn’t get really sick he will turn in all that wealth to a retirement home. Next time you see him, he will be greeting you at wall mart or bagging your groceries.
Example: Friend of mine was in a car accident and he suffered spinal injury which left him almost paralyzed. He underwent couple of surgeries and he has to be under physical therapy constantly. Let me just say that medical insurance company stopped paying his bills after $300,000. Right now I think his medical bills are over six million dollars! Yes that’s US Dollars.

Point is that no matter what the average person does, he will always have that annoying background anxiety. Be that fear of loosing your job, mortgage, medical bills, kids college, health issues or just a feeling of not doing anything with your life, those anxieties will always be there. All of those anxieties are caused and are pure product of pressures of capitalist society and economy. Even if you have everything paid for; secure retirement and piece of mind is not guaranteed. Something always comes along to put you back in your place of being a laborer.

So conclusion of this article is that capitalism does work. It works gloriously, but only for capitalists. It works great for the wealthy. Those who tell you that capitalism and privatization really work are the biggest bullshitors world has ever spat out. Either that or they’ve been persuaded into believing in a dream that will never come. I really cannot believe that there are normal, healthy people in this world who believe that pure capitalism brings wealth and prosperity to the people.
Problem is that there’s not much average guy can do except to vote in elections only for his/hers interests and not against it. I lived overseas and currently am living in US, so I’ve experienced both sides, but I’m still baffled by people who vote against their own interests.
Reassuring fact is, when cup is full, when working class have had enough, capitalist class will hear the rumble of the people (as Nader used to put it). It happened before and will happen again. We don’t have 14 hour working days anymore. We have women voting rights, child labor laws, work discrimination laws, labor unions, welfare programs etc. Every one of those laws was accomplished by working class.
People fought for their rights before, and be assured, when pushed into a corner, they will fight again.

Consider answering following questions about time (Do not just read these questions, but think about them for a little bit). I call them mind-benders.

• Can every moment in time of the past exists somewhere?
• Does past actually exists somewhere? If it does, Is it than stored somewhere?
• How about the future or present? Can future and present exist somewhere?
• Can you define present? How long does the present lasts?
• If you think that present exists, then where is it? If you think that past exists, then where is it?

When you really think about it answer is so simple that even child could understand it, so we conclude following: no past, present and future can exists without violating at least dozens of physics and logical laws; which in turn would imply that time does not exists.
Passage of time is just an illusion we made up to cope and measure the change. No more and no less; Everything else in between is work of our imagination, science-fiction writers and physicist with too much time on their hands. That is essentially what this article will be about. Just a thought exercise to see if we can have a logical world with no time existing.

Let’s first start with the quote:

” A famous philosophical argument says that, if the future were real, then it would be fixed now, and we would not have the freedom to affect that future. Since we do have that freedom, the future can’t be real”

What this quote is essentially saying is that predetermined future cannot exists because we’re the ones that are making it it as we go along. If that kind of future did exist somewhere, than we would not be able to affect it with our own actions. So no matter what I did, my future would always remain the same.

We all know stories and science fiction novels about traveling back to in time and further into the future. We also know about time travel paradoxes. Most famous being grandfather paradox. It goes like this:
If you went back in time and killed your grandfather, you would not exists since he would not be able to have children of his own. He would be dead and you would’ve never been born. But, if you weren’t born you would not be able to go back in time to kill your grandfather in the first place since you didn’t exist, but obviously you do exist and you did go back in time and you did kill your grandfather. This creates a logical paradox and big inconsistency in logical thinking. But we’ll come back to this later in the article.
There’s another paradox which physicist don’t talk about, but to me it seams like even stranger paradox than the grandfather one. I’m sure someone else though of this but I’ll just state it. It goes like this:
Today is 2008, and let’s suppose you go back to 2006 and meet yourself. Now there’s two of you. How would that be possible without violating Conservation of Energy Law, which states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms. Obviously since there’s two of you occupying same space and time, one of you was created. Either that or you are leaving copies of yourself on every instance (frame) in time which would violate the law even further.

Another example: Imagine taking the whole earth back with you to only yesterday. You would now have two earths in the same orbit! You would have increase in mass and God knows how would that affect the space in our Solar System. You might try to counter this argument by saying that it would not be possible to take anything with you back in time; But with that logic you wouldn’t be able to take yourself back in time either, so time travel would still not be possible.

Let’s take that little further and say that from 2006 you wanted to jump to 2000 and look up yourself there too. Now there’s three copies of you. Two copies of you exist in the year 2000 and one that you left in 2006. Or would that 2006 copy of you just disappear? How would that actually work?
It gets even more complex and illogical if one wants to define instance. What’s one instance? What is NOW? Is it one second? One microsecond? Nanosecond? How about picosecond? You can pretty much go to infinite regression and make no progress of defining NOW.
It seems that we’re creating problems that don’t really exists, and and then trying to find a solution for it.

Einstein wrote extensively in his papers about time. The whole premise of General Theory Of Relativity revolves around time. However, Einstein did claim that traveling to past is not going to be possible. I happen to agree with that, but for different reasons. Einstein’s relativity claims time is directly correlated to mass, speed of light and energy (E=MC2) and that nothing could travel faster than light. Faster you go (higher your velocity), slower the time passes for you.
If you were to ever reach speed of light you would have to become one dimensional and would have no mass. Like photon particles. Time would then stop for you. You would not be affected by time. Just like light is not affected by time. It is the only constant in universe. But you would never be able to catch up with the light anyway.
If you would to travel along side of light; It would not matter how fast you were going; from your perspective light would still be going 186,000 miles per second. For example: If you were to travel close to the speed of light (185,000 miles per second lets say), light would still be going 186,000 miles per second respective to you. Not only you would never be able to catch up with it, but it would look as if you were just standing still and light is just zipping by you regardless of your speed.
Now, in order to go back in time you would have to travel faster than the speed of light and have negative mass. Einstein believed that is not possible.

Lets now see solution for all these inconsistencies and paradoxes. New speculative-theory which states that time does not exists solves this and many other problems. It states that time is just an arbitrary concept we made up and it’s only a measurement of change. Nothing more. Every kind of change for that matter. Just like mile is a measurement of distance. Mile doesn’t really physically exists. Same thing with time. Time as a physical or multidimensional entity doesn’t really exists. We use concept of time to measures changes in our body, motion, aging etc. Nothing more.
Without time there’s no grandfather paradox. Here’s how:
You would not be able to go back in time to kill your grandfather because your grandfather is here! There is no such a thing as “before”. Maybe your grandfather is not alive right now, but in whichever form, he is definitely here. Yes he was alive 20 years ago, but right now he is physically HERE, in a different form, made of different particles, but that doesn’t mean that there’s another copy of your grandfather existing back in 1950’s or 1968 or any year you happen to pick.
The only proof of your grandfather existing in the past you have is memories of him. Having memories of your grandfather don’t mean he still exists in the past. If you for example look at a photograph of your grandfather to remind you of him; would that mean that your grandpa from the photograph still exists somewhere? And if he does exists somewhere in time; that would mean that every other instance of your life also exists somewhere in time.
Here’s another example with photograph: Lets say you pick up the photograph of yourself, and in that photograph you have a black eye. That black eye has healed so far. But does it mean that your black eye from the photograph still exists somewhere? I think we can see false logic here. Your black eye cannot exists because the eye you’re reading this text with now, and the black eye from the past are actually the same eye. The only difference is in change. Black eye has healed (dead cells got replaced by healthy ones etc…) and turned into normal healthy eye, but it’s the same eye.
We created paradoxes like “grandfather’s paradox” only because we assume that there are multiple copies of your grandfather you can go back to. I think it is more natural to assume that time as a physical entity does not really exists, and that the only way to go back in time is to UNDO the changes that affect you and your surroundings. That would mean to put everything (and I mean everything) back the way it was let’s say 20 minutes ago. You might as well say “going back in change” instead of “going back in time”.
I will give you analogy for this example but before I do that let’s define what it means “to age”. To age simply means cell death. Your cells are dying and getting weaker and weaker so you have sense of aging. That’s it. Time has nothing to do with it. Time as a physically (or logical) entity cannot make you age. Change is the only thing that takes place. The only reason you feel weaker as you age is because of billions and billions of your cells are dying ever day but they don’t get replaced by the same amount. Remember this since you will need it for the next experiment.

Going 20 minutes back in “time” in a world with no “time” experiment

I have been thinking of an analogy to use here to accurately describe what happens in a world with no time so hopefully following analogy will explain it well. As you read following scenario please try to visualize events happening.

Imagine yourself siting in the middle of a small room on a wooden chair.
There’s nothing in the room but you, four walls, ceiling, floor and that wooden chair.
You absolutely are not doing anything but motionlessly stare at the wall.
It seems that nothing is happening and that time is standing still. But that is not true. Atoms in your body as well as atoms and molecules in walls around you and chair underneath you, are in constant motion and are changing constantly. Even the air around you is in constant motion.
After 20 minutes, wooden chair breaks and you fall and bruise your butt. The act of chair breaking is the only thing you’ve been aware of in those 20 minutes. If chair did not break you would not be able to tell the difference between minute 2 from minute 5 lets say, but since now you have a reference point (chair breaking), it seems like some time did pass and you would be able to pin point differences between minute 2 and 5. It would be easy because you would use breaking of a chair as a reference point. Keep with me here, we’re almost done.
Now ask yourself: What would it take for you to go back in time when chair was whole and your butt was bruisless? Can you guess by now? No, not a time machine or a worm hole.
To truly go back in time, all you would have to do is to revert changes back to way they were 20 minutes ago. And that includes everything: the chair, your body, floor, ceiling, air molecules and four walls around you.

• That would mean putting back and re-arranging every molecule back where it was.
• Every atom in that broken chair would have to be repaired and reassembled the way it was 20 minutes ago.
• That would also mean you would have to cure your cells from aging and revert them to state they were in 20 minutes ago. Cells don’t just disappear after they die. They turn into energy, so you would also need to convert some of the lost energy back into cells. That would also cure your bruise.
• You would have to rearrange your neurons in your brain to reflect original state which was 20 minutes ago, which would in turn erase your current memories.
• Every molecule and atom in the walls, ceiling, floor and air around you would have to be rearranged, converted and reverted back to the 20 minutes ago.

Once everything is done, you could say that you truly went back in time without time. Then there would be no difference between you (and the room) right now and you 20 minutes ago. None whatsoever. You went beck in time without time really existing. But that would only apply to you. Outside world would still be unaffected by your molecule rearrangements and would continue aging and changing, but you would be 20 minutes younger.
Of course in current practice all this is impossible and irreversible without using up godly amount of energy. Just imagine the feat of trying to revert changes just for the room example!
That is exactly why we have grandfather’s paradox. If your grandfather is dead right now, the only way to see him alive is not go back in 1950’s but to revert changes that lead to his death. And that includes everything. Going back in time with a time machine would created logical paradox which doesn’t make any sense since it would require multiple copies of grandfathers to exists which violates not just logic but our fundamental laws of physics. We only have illusion that time exists because we use it to measure the actual change. It’s simple as that.

I realize that some of these examples are really simple and maybe point of view a true realist would have, but sometimes in order to see the truth, we need to oversimplify things to get past the clutter and fog.

This is the point where you ask: “What about relativity? If there’s no time, how come that we’ve observed that time does slows down for a person in motion?” Good question, but that’s illusion too. Person’s perception of time slows down because everything in his/hers body slows down as they go faster and faster. That includes: heart rate, brain neurons, cell division, cell death, protein forming and the whole enchilada. At this stage person’s perception of everything slows down. Relativity also treats time as one and the same entity as space. If there’s no space there would be no time; so “no time” theory would not affect relativity at all. Think about it. If there’s no space than it would be impossible for matter to exists. If there’s no matter and space, there would no occurrence of any changes taking place and time would still not exists.
The fact is that time still remains more of philosophical question than anything else.

I am going to try to explain basic differences between scientific theory, law, facts and hypothesis. There are lot of misconceptions about these so I thought I’d try to explain it as best I can.
I am no scientist but I do have friends (from both sides of Atlantic) that are so I pick their brains every once in a while. Also, I still remember this from the science class when I went to school and I did great deal of researching about the subject through out the years.
Amazingly, scientific theory is something all scientists agree on, with no exception regardless of geographical location. So this article will not be me speculating. These are coming from the actual scientists themselves.
We all heard following phrase: “Oh it’s just a theory and not a fact.”
Theory in every day life is indeed just a speculation, but in scientific world theory is something totally different as we will see from the following article.

It’s important for a somewhat educated person living in 21st century to know what scientific theory is and be able to name basic differences between Law and Theory. This is elementary knowledge but people forget these things quickly. That’s why “Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader” show works so well.

Lets take matters from the beginning and see how scientists form theories.

Chronological step by step:

1. Observational Facts - Are collection of data through observation methods. If I drop the ball from my hand it will fall to the ground. If I repeat this many times, I will get same results over and over. Ball will fall to the ground every time. This is an observational fact. Some more observational facts: Rivers running in certain direction, bees pollinating flowers, etc..
2. Law - Getting back to ball fall. if I get same results with other objects after repeated experiments, I can form some kind of law with probable certainty. This is Newton’s Law of Gravity. However, this law does not explains why did ball drop on the floor. It just describes the event. That’s it. There’s not much difference between law and observational facts. You could in a sense say that Scientific Law is just body of predictable observational facts. Nothing more.
3. Hypothesis - After the law is formed, scientist will try to explain it by observation and repeated experiments. Eventually they will form different hypothesis. Hypothesis are ideas that could be falsified, changed and modeled as the new evidence comes in. Does the ball falls because earth is bigger than the ball? Does the ball falls because there’s an invisible force that is attracting the ball towards the earth? Will the ball fall at the same speed in vacuum? Etc… Scientists will continue to hypothesize until there’s no new evidence to dispute their hypothesis. But they’re not done yet. Hypothesis has to pass scrutiny of grueling tests under different conditions and repeated experiments. All of those experiments has to conform to their proposed hypothesis every time. If they don’t, hypothesis is thrown away and the scientist moves on.
4. Scientific Theory comes the last. Only if hypothesis passes all of the above stages, it can be formed into Scientific Theory. Scientific Theory is crowning achievement in science. In science, there’s nothing higher than theory. It’s Creme De La Cream. You can describe Scientific Theory as following: Theory is a comprehensive explanation of natural world that is supported by factual observations, independently testable and repeated experiments. Theory is explanation. So theory contains facts and laws. Laws and facts are part of the theory.

But it doesn’t end there. Theory then has to be peer reviewed. It will be bombarded by skepticism from other scientists with their own hypothesis and theories from same field of studies.
Who do you think is the major debunker of scientific theory? It’s other scientists. They will try to debunk and disprove new theories and replace them with theories of their own all the time. It’s a constant battle.
Every scientist wants to get recognized and possibly get Nobel Prize, but you don’t get Noble Prize by just confirming already established theory. You want to debunk it and replace it with better theory or at least make a noticeable correction (like Einstein did with Newton’s) worth the Noble Prize.
Scientific theories are constantly evaluated, peer reviewed, bombarded and critically examined by other scientist. That’s how we get well established theories. Just imagine scientific theory that passed all that scrutiny and criticism for hundred years. It’s the closest thing to the truth and explanation of natural world as we know it. That’s why all well established theories are almost unshakable and last for long time. Theory of Evolution and Cell Theory are one of them. Plate tectonics, General Relativity, Atomic Theory are all examples of well established theories.

Theory Of Evolution (by Natural Selection) being the most criticized and attacked, withstood test of time for 150 years! That is more testing, evaluating, examining, collecting evidence than any other well established theory we have.
The fact that some us (who don’t practice science professionally 14 hours or so a day, every day!) just don’t believe part (or whole) of it has nothing to do with theory being true or not. As long as it’s accepted within scientific community (you know… people who dedicated their whole lives to theories like these) theory will remain true. Public should be educated of course, but if you as a non-scientist want and try to debunk or argue some theory and you think you have the knowledge, roll the dice, write the paper and see if your thesis withstands same scrutiny as the theory you’re trying to debunk.
I cannot just tell to the carpenter how to make a table. Especially If I have never picked up a wood saw in my life.

Scientific Theories are less certain than laws. That’s true, but that’s only because law is just bunch of observational facts. Nothing else. It’s meaningless without the theory. It doesn’t provide any explanation. Theory of Evolution for example can never be a fact since it’s comprised of many facts and biological laws. It’s like a deck of cards. Theory Of Evolution being the deck and cards being the facts. It would make no sense to call the whole deck “a card”.

As the new evidence comes in theory will get tweaked and improved. But that’s the beauty of it. It will get modeled into comprehensive set of explanations of our natural world.
Think about this. Even if you see, with your own eyes, something that contradicts well established theory, it would not mean much. Eyes can deceive and we all know that brain is the best 3D software there is. Schizophrenics for example see and hear voices that ARE real to THEM. That doesn’t make it real. Scientific method is the only and the best way we know how to explain actual reality since it requires independent testing under different conditions regardless if public agrees with it or not. It’s up to science and teachers to explain their theories so we can understand them well. I agree that is something scientists and teachers have not been doing a great job at, but that’s for the whole new article.