Fifty Years Ago and Now

1962. Fifty years ago. I was 16. Like any fortunate 16-year-old I was madly in love with a girl my age who let me kiss and fondle her for hours every day after school—being kissable and fondlable are sufficient grounds for any 16-year-old male to fall madly in love. Before the year was out, our relationship was over and I was working through that other primary adolescent experience: heartbreak.

Unbeknownst to me a British rock group had just released its first single. Love Me Do didn't do particularly well, but it was enough to set the Beatles on their way. It was probably about another six months before I heard a Beatles tune—and a few years away from my awakening to their awakening with works like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Strawberry Fields. In the meantime I had Bob Dylan and Masters of War as an anthem coming down the pipes. But, in 1962 there was nothing except meaningless studio-manufactured tripe on the radio. Like a rubber ball, I come bouncing back to you—a who, who, who, a who! (Bouncy-bouncy; bouncy-bouncy—oh, oh, oh!)

Also in the fall of 1962 we experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis. Young folks today think they know all about despair and what an awful mess the older generation has made of the world. They don’t know anything. Those who of who were conscious and aware in 1962 have already been through the Apocalypse—and survived. We were literally hours away from a world-wide catastrophe from which there would be no recovery. How we reacted spoke volumes. Our elder generation told us to hide in basements with our arms over our heads. To this day I can’t believe that they really believed that protecting our heads with our forearms would do anything to prevent us from being vaporized, but, then, they had survived a major world war by following just such advice. My response was to wear a “Ban the Bomb” pin to school which threw my girlfriend into a rage because it marked me as a coward. When I refused to leave my seat when the time came to be herded into the school basement (I figured I might as well be dead at my desk than in a hole in the ground), the school principal turned red in the face and threatened to suspend me. Fellow students (who, in later years tried to convince me that they were closet hippies at the time) called me a communist-lover and traitor. I recall one who was so angry at my apparent insubordination that he slammed me into a locker and screamed invectives. I just simply stopped going to school after a while.

Yes, I know it is hard to believe today, but, seriously, in the early 1960’s anyone who objected to being fried by nuclear weapons was called a coward, spat upon, and sometimes beaten by police officers. (I got pushed hard a few times, but never actually beaten—though friends were.)

In the fall in 1962, Dr. No was in the theatres, though it would be another year before Dr. Who made his first television appearance. Both James Bond and the Good Doctor are still around, James in his 6^th incarnation and the Doctor in his 11th. Though I was still infatuated with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee vampire movies at the time, it would not be long before I became a fan of European movies from Russia, Sweden, and Italy (Eisenstein, Bergman, and Fellini). Interestingly, it was about that time that I discovered the great twentieth century Russian composers (Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich) to which I've remained attached all my life.

In 1962 I discovered the club sandwich and western omelette. I was still about five years away from my first pizza and lasagne. Spaghetti was something that came out of a can. Cherry coke was a novelty. Everyone, but everyone, smoked tobacco constantly and wore their shoes all day—in house and out. In 1962 I stopped putting grease in my hair and spending inordinate amounts of time trying to place each hair just so. First I adopted the “Caesar cut”—short hair simply brushed forward. It wasn’t long before I gave up on hair styles altogether and let it grow where it wanted to. Standard clothing switched from “dress pants” for school to blue jeans. It just happened as part of a seeming natural evolution. In 1962 I drank my first espresso coffee and read Thomas Pynchon’s V. (I still have that original copy of the book. I’ll have to re-read it some time.)

In 1962 I befriended the first open homosexuals I had knowingly encountered. They were worried about being entrapped by police officers and sent to prison. I knew people who risked seven year prison terms by smoking marijuana, but, I was still a few years away from toking up with the rest of my generation. On the subject of… in 1962 Dr. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later called Ram Dass) were experimenting with LSD at Harvard University. Dr. Ewen Cameron was playing with the lives and mental health of patients at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute on behest of the CIA, testing out Chinese brainwashing techniques coupled with doses of LSD and sleep deprivation. Two men, Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, were hanged in Toronto’s Don Jail in 1962, the last to be executed by the state in Canada.

Not much was going on in Vietnam in 1962 that was of note to the outside world.  The number of American advisors supporting the corrupt and unpopular Diem regime had risen to about 15,000 by the end of 1962, but it was still a couple of years before American teenagers and young men were fighting a war both in South East Asia and on American university campuses. In the late 60’s I met so many American deserters in Montreal that they appeared to form a major immigration group on their own. I later figured that the later amazing progress of Canadian research in the sciences and medicine had a lot to do with our acceptance of so many bright, educated, and thinking young people during the late 60’s and early 70’s.  (BTW, Canada is still a leader in world research in many areas, though we’re starting to slip.)

Right now I am sitting at a desk in my home office, using a computer that is magnitudes more powerful than the largest of the mainframes available fifty years ago—and it is my personal machine. No, I am not able to afford the millions of dollars for some crude circuit boards, vacuum tubes, and miles of thick wires and toggle switches that were required to do some basic mathematical calculations; just an average retiree able to purchase engineering so advanced that a computer scientist in 1962 would have it thought impossible—not just for private individuals, but for any government or huge company to afford. The thinking processes and approaches have underground major revolutions in the past fifty years. What was once unthinkable is now common-place. And…perhaps more significantly, what was once common-place is now unthinkable.

Capital Solutions

That there are some seriously damaged and dangerous persons alive in the world is a given. That we need to be protected from them is also a no-brainer. But, where we differ is on how we deal with them and how we protect ourselves from their destructiveness. I have met many intelligent people during my lifetime who say that there are cases when capital punishment is the appropriate response when we encounter the monsters in our midst. My initial emotional response is to agree, on a purely theoretical level.  After all, it is easy to list recent serial killers who are, beyond a doubt, guilty of the crimes they have been convicted of.

But...then I stop and think of the many people (mostly men) who have been convicted by a legal system that, presumably, was absolutely convinced of their guilt, and yet they have been found, later—sometimes very many years later—to have been demonstrably and convincingly not guilty of committing the crimes of which they were convicted. It is a very difficult situation all round when this occurs: how do you give someone back twenty or thirty years of their life? Even worse: how do you even begin to rectify things if the party has been put to death?

That, to me, has always been the central objection to capital punishment that I hold highest. It recognizes that we can be absolutely convinced that something has occurred and yet discover later that we were absolutely wrong. It happens all the time, though usually involving less momentous events.

My second-highest objection has always been that the commission of an evil act can never justify an equally evil response. If the purpose of capital punishment is to prevent someone from repeating a criminal act then there are other routes that can be followed to achieve the same end without crossing an absolute line from which there is no return or redress. If the purpose of capital punishment is to seek revenge, then, in what way does that make us in any sense morally superior to the criminal? What about victim’s rights? many say. Well, what of victim’s rights? I respond. I would not feel any better about my death by murder knowing that my murderer will be put to death. My rights were violently and finally ripped away from me when I was murdered—and no subsequent action on anyone’s part can ever undo that violation and set things to right.

 I think that many support the concept of capital punishment because it is something that will never touch their lives. Let’s just get rid of all the bad guys and be done with it; no further thought on the subject is required. That’s an understandable response. But, whatever power we give to the state can be misused and directed against us. So, it does matter whether or not we grant the state power over the life and death of its citizens. Also, whatever the state does it does, presumably, is in the name of all of us. Frankly, I do not trust a state that can recognize people such as Dr. Charles Smith, formerly Ontario’s top forensic child pathologist, as being qualified to pass judgement on me, or anyone I know—or don’t know—if a child in my care dies. Chances are pretty good that Dr. Smith would find evidence that you had shaken the child to death—as he did in so many cases where the condemned were eventually found to have been innocent.

People who support the death penalty would be advised to read something on the subject. I just finished reading a book by David R. Dow called The Autobiography of an Execution (New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2010). Mr Dow is a lawyer practising in Texas who specializes in defending death penalty cases. Oh sure, another liberal softy, right? Not quite: Mr Dow was, for many years, in favour of the death penalty and freely admits that there are those whose crimes are so aberrant, so disgusting, so cruel, so evil that it would seem that even putting them to death was letting them off easy.

But…of the approximately 200 cases Mr Dow was involved with, seven of the men put to death by the state were clearly innocent. The jury agree they were innocent, the judge agreed they were innocent, the guards and prison warders all agreed they were innocent…but, they were put to death anyway. Why? Well, there’s a process in place…and what that process does is relieve anyone involved in that process of personal responsibility. The book is centred around the case of such a man whose only “crime”—ultimately—was to be appointed an incompetent lawyer at his trial. For that “failure” on his part, he was put to death.

As Mr. Dow points out, the police are not accountable: they simply turn over whatever evidence they have to the state attorney’s office. The state attorney is not accountable because all he does is present the evidence that someone else collected to a court that makes the decision. The jurors are not responsible because they weigh the evidence that was presented to them and must make a decision based only on that. The judge can’t help anything: it was the jurors’ decision. The appeal courts have no responsibility in the matter because they rule only on legal issues. Texas takes the process a step further: though, technically, the state governor makes the final decision on whether to grant clemency or insist that the death penalty process proceed, he, in fact, does not. The Texas governor has a panel comprised of political friends that he has appointed to the position that reviews all death penalty appeals and makes it recommendations to the governor, who, subsequently, stands before the television cameras and says he has no choice in the matter: he must abide by the panel’s recommendation.

Chances are pretty good that if you are black or Latino and have been arrested and charged with murder in Texas that, no matter how flimsy the evidence or how lackadaisical the defence, you will wind up on death row. Is that a price we are prepared to pay?

I know that some people say well, that’s tough. Yes, we make mistakes, but, so what? It is worth it if it keeps a few more monsters off our streets. Yes, killing some insanely evil people after they have created their pain and mayhem will mean that they will not ever repeat their acts. But, does killing them prevent any other lunatic from committing his outrageous offences? Not very likely. Unfortunately, even the most sane and well-balanced criminals do not include the likelihood of their capture and punishment when they set out on their paths—and that is even more so for the truly unbalanced who commit the worst acts imaginable.

Capital punishment does not, in the end, protect anyone. In fact, the inverse appears to be true: a society that makes liberal application of capital punishment is far more likely to have higher murder and violence rates than states that put their resources into prevention rather than after-the-fact punishment.

Taxing Times

I worked for a tax preparation firm for six years preparing personal income tax returns. As we often pointed out to ourselves, preparing a tax return is the most complicated job the average person faces every year; for me, it was easy. Plug a few facts and numbers into a software program, et voilà, one return ready for filing.

Of course I cannot reveal anything about any individuals’ return—not even the fact that we prepared their tax return—but I can talk in general terms without giving away identifiable information.

When I think back on my years as a tax preparer there are certain events that stand out in my memory. One such event occurred during my first season. It was April 30ieth, the final date for filing personal returns, and as expected, the waiting room was crammed with folks who had waited until the very last minute. All you can do in that situation is put your head down and take the clients one at a time, acting as though you had all the time in the world to deal with the person sitting on the other side of the desk.

Late in the evening, as the crowd was starting to thin, I noticed a very thin young man, shabbily dressed, with dried blood on his upper lip, head into the cubicle of a colleague—an older woman who generally did not have much empathy with the many welfare recipients we dealt with. A few moments later I saw the young man leaving the cubicle looking downcast. Definitely not enough time to have prepared his return.

After the madness of April 30ieth, May 1^st is generally a very quiet day. All the regular tax preparers left at the end of the last shift, not to return until late fall, early winter. I was fortunate enough to be one of the very few kept on staff during the off season. So, later in the afternoon the young man I had seen the night before came into the office. I invited him into my cubicle. The blood on his upper lip was gone. After we settled into our chairs he said in a quiet voice, “Help me straighten out my life.” It turned out that he had not filed a return in five years, having spent most of that time addicted to an illegal drug. However, he had just come out of rehabilitation and was determined to get back on track.

The ideal way to work through that kind of situation is to prepare the oldest tax return first, then ask the client to pay for it after he receives the refund for that year. Then we’d go onto the second eldest and work our way forwards. It took a long time, but it was the best way to help someone with no or very little income to catch up. It was win-win: he’d get his taxes caught up without a financial blow and we’d be paid for preparing five years worth of returns.  It was one of those procedures management disapproved of, as they wanted the returns to be paid for before we filed them, but, when you are on the front lines you have to adjust to the real circumstances you face every day. The company would not go bankrupt if someone neglected to pay for one tax return after we had filed it.

As I worked with the young man that summer, I was impressed by his progress. Every time I saw him he was a bit cleaner and a bit healthier looking. I was quite proud of myself for having taking the time and steps to help him out—and was annoyed with and felt superior to—the tax preparer who had turned him away on April 30ieth. But now, from the perspective of someone older and—hopefully—less judgmental I have come to realize why she had turned him away that night.  First there was no rush to get his returns prepared—they were already very late. Secondly, if she had prepared five years worth of returns that night he would have been unable to pay for them. And, thirdly, it would take a long time to prepare those five returns and we had a lot of people waiting who did have to meet the filing deadline.

So, in summary, I had judged someone for judging someone else, when, in fact, she hadn’t. She was being practical and I was being the smug idealist. And, when I think of it, if it had been my cubicle he was in on the evening of April 30ieth, would I have gone ahead and prepared his delinquent returns right then? I don’t know; it was my first year and I was fairly naïve. I know that I would have acted the same way as my colleague had if I had been in that situation a few years later once I had had some experience.

How to do well on any course

I was a lousy high school student. I did the opposite of everything I am going to suggest here. However, when I started university I made a promise to myself: 1) I would attend every class unless I was really sick; and 2) I would do every assignment to the best of my ability.

That worked pretty well. I can’t honestly say I was a straight A student, but I was considered for a medal awarded to the graduates with the best overall record. I breezed through the post graduate courses because I already had a firm foundation on which to build.

Since university I taught for many years. Secondary school for eight years and many one or two-day mini-courses and seminars over the years. I have also taken a lot of courses, from assembler code for computer operating systems to advanced income tax to music composition. Doesn’t matter what the subject of a course is. If I take it, I will do well. The reason is that, in addition to the two promises in the first paragraph that I made and kept, I have developed some insights over the years from both a teacher’s and a student’s perspective  that I’m going to share with you.

First, every classroom has a sweet-spot that is worth a few marks to whoever sits there. If the instructor is right handed, the sweet-spot is in the second or third row (depending on the size of the classroom), about the mid-right of the room. (If there are ten rows of seats it would be the third seat from the right.) If the teacher is left-handed, then sit in the complimentary seat on the left side of the room. The reason is simple: when writing on a marker board or flip-sheet, that is the direction the teacher will be facing most often. And, you want the instructor to notice you (for the right reasons, not the wrong ones).

You should also volunteer to answer questions. Even if you are wrong, the fact that you are responding to the teacher gives the teacher a more favourable impression of you (everyone likes to know that he is being listened to). But, do not volunteer too often. You don’t want to become one of those students who dominate the class; even the instructor will become annoyed with you after a time; the other students long before that. My rule of thumb is: I will pause before raising my hand long enough to see if there are others volunteering answers. If no one else responds, I will raise my hand. The occasional funny remark is okay, but, don’t overdo it—and don’t become perceived as a “smart-ass;” no one likes them.

When it comes to assignments, it should not be necessary to tell you to do all of them as best and as neatly as you can. Even if the teacher does not “check homework,” she will know who is putting in the effort and who isn’t. Also, doing the assignments is a way of reinforcing what the instructor was trying to get across to you. If given a choice of assignments or questions, pick the most difficult. The reason? Almost all of the other students will pick the easy route—and you don’t want to be perceived as “just another student.” Even if you mess up while attempting the hardest assignment, the teacher will appreciate that you took the time and effort and is likely to spend some extra time with you showing you where you went wrong.

Everyone hates exams. But, they are less stressful if you review your class notes and materials regularly throughout the course. Repetition makes the memory stronger. And, most importantly, the night before the exam put your books away. Relax and get a good night’s sleep. Cramming at the last minute will not make up for the time you should have spent in the days and weeks before; and, you will do better on the exam if you are relaxed and well-rested.

Take at least three pens with you into the exam. You do not want to be caught without a reliable writing instrument mid-exam. Bring whatever accessories you are permitted: like calculators or dictionaries. Relax. Read the entire exam over before starting to write down answers (your brain will be working on some of the questions in the background while you are focused on the one at hand). Estimate how much time you will need for each section of the exam, and plan accordingly. If the exam is two-hours long and there are four equally-sized sections spend twenty minutes on each section (you will need time for review later). If you don’t complete a section within your time limit, go on to the next section and return later if you have time remaining. Read your answers over before handing in your paper; read them twice if you have time. Ask yourself: Do they make sense? Do they address the questions?

If you finish an exam in less than two-thirds of the allocated time, then you possibly have not answered in the detail required or you could have missed part of a question. The earlier you finish, the more time you should spend reviewing.

Let me give you an example of what a simple oversight can cost. One year I was writing an exam on business income tax returns. The questions were generally true-false, but explanations for the answers were required and the explanations were to be written in complete sentences with references to the particular tax law or ruling. Simple enough, right? However, though the explanatory part of my answer clearly answered the question correctly I did not specifically state whether the answer was “yes” or “no” as asked. The result: instead of a perfect grade, I got 97%. Perfect grades are a rare species that should be sought after with care and preparation—and cherished when you get one.

What I have been reading lately.

For my last birthday, 6 December 2011, my wife Ann gave me a Kobo e-reader. It has radically changed my reading habits. Previously, I rarely read a book that I did not own—and, when I could not afford to buy new books, I re-read the old ones. However, the Internet, through my Kobo connection, has opened up an entirely new world of reading. Below is a list of the books that I have read in the past 7 months. Only one of them is fiction. Most of them I downloaded for free.  Many of them are outstanding books that I highly recommend; the others are all worth the read.

Some day, when I am brave enough, I will tackle Plato’s “The Republic” and Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (both available for free).

Though there are many such sites, the ones that have the most books that I am interested in available at no charge are the University of Chicago Press and the Gutenberg Project.

Collections of Nothing; William Davis King; University of Chicago Press; 2008.

French Lessons, A Memoir; Alice Kaplan; University of Chicago Press; 1993.

Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela ; Conrad Rudolph; University of Chicago Press;  2004.

A Planet of Viruses; Carl Zimmer; University of Chicago Press; 2011.

The Unobservable Universe: A Paradox-Free Framework for Understanding the Universe; Scott M. Tyson; Galaxia Way; 2011.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. James Gleik; Pantheon Books; 2011.

The Worst Journey in the World; Apsley Cherry-Garrad; Duke Classics; Carroll & Graft Publishers; 2003 (originally published by Constable; 1922)

Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover The Deepest Places On Earth; James M. Tabor; Random House; 2010.

Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness; Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner;  Oxford University Press; 2006.

In One Person; John Irving; Alfred A. Knopf Publishing; 2012,

The Grand Design; Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow; Bantam Books; 2010.

God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine ; Victoria Sweet; Riverhead Books; 2012.

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Stephen Greenblatt; W. W. Norton & Company; 2011.

A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing; Lawrence M. Krauss; Simon & Schuster, Inc.; 2012.

Illegal Harmonies: Music in the Modern Age; Andrew Ford; Black Inc.; 1997.

Life in the Backwoods; Susanna Moodie; Gutenberg Project; 2006 (Orignally published: 1852).

The Mysteries of Montreal: Being Recollections of a Female Physician;  Charlotte Fuhrer; Gutenberg Project;   (Originally published 1881)

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival; John Vaillant; Alfred A. Knopf;  2010.

A History of the World in 100 Objects; Neil MacGregor; Penguin;  2010.

Heart of Darkness; Joseph Conrad; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1902).

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest trail; Cheryl Strayed; Alfred A. Knopf; 2012.

The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America; Thomas Jefferson; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1776).

The Communist Manifesto; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; Gutenberg Project   (Originally published 1888).

Prufrock and Other Observations; T. S. Eliot; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1920).

80 million Americans can't be wrong...or can they?

I read one of those “filler” stories in the paper today (you know: the kind they use when they have an awkward space to fill).  The headline: “80 million Americans believe in UFOs.” Wow! That’s more than twice the population of Canada. The story matched the headline (not always the case.)

That left me scratching my head (metaphorically). What the heck do the words believe in and the abbreviation UFO mean?  The second one is fairly easy: Unidentified Flying Object. That means, if I interpret Modern American correctly: there are things in the sky (deduced from “flying”) that we can’t identify. Fair enough. I can’t always immediately identify everything I see either. And, just because I can’t immediately identify it does not mean it is involved with an alien planet. I mean, that is the last conclusion I would draw if I was baffled by something. Occam's razor aside, we rarely accept the most complicated and convoluted explanation when there is a simpler explanation at hand. Well, I guess, to many people (80 million Americans at least) the easiest solution is to assume an alien presence.

This approach was popularized by Erich von Däniken in his 1968 misinterpretation of anthropology called Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. It really is a fun read if you can stand the supermarket tabloid leaps of logic (it’s a mystery, so it must be the work of alien visitors). (I once saw one of these publications on a newsstand with the headline Scientists Photograph Heaven over a photo of a spiral galaxy seen edge-on.)  von Däniken was especially entranced by halos in medieval art. This standard symbol of sainthood absolutely must be a drawing of a Plexiglas space helmet. He finds unknown shapes around the heads of many Aztec bas relief and there you have it: the final proof that earth has been visited by creatures from another planet. Crop circles just underscore the evidence and are proof that they are still around watching over us.

Okay, enough fun at Herr von Däniken’s expense. He isn’t the only one: just one of the first mass popularizers of the blame it on aliens school of thought. One thing that many members of that school cite as evidence is the pyramids of Egypt. Humans simply could not have built them; heck, we couldn’t even do it now with all our modern technology. The trouble is that those who are inspired by facile drawings of slaves dragging stones while men with whips stand over them, are missing a vital piece of information. Why assume that slaves dragged these monstrous building blocks? Why not assume, if you are going on assumptions, that the Egyptians were smart enough to figure out the (relatively) easy way to move a large block? It’s really very simple—and you may kick yourself if you never thought of it. Lash logs lengthwise to each of the four faces of the stone. Build the logs up until you have about as close to a circular shape (as seen from either end) as you can get. Now push the stone just enough that it passes the point of equilibrium at an edge (remember, that you can now “rock” the stone thanks to the cleverly placed logs)—and the stone will complete the rest of the journey to its next face. Rock and roll, as they say.  (If you are lucky enough to be going down-hill, the stone might just keep on going on its own once you get it started.)

You still need a lot of slaves and a system of pulleys and levers (which were not beyond the capabilities of our ancient ancestors), and lots of time, but there you have it: no alien energy rays or anti-gravity devices required.

Sorry folks, but using aliens to explain away things that you don’t understand just doesn’t wash. I might as well say that my car runs with alien technology because I certainly can’t understand all the technology that goes into making my car move when I want it to.

Now, back to the sky. When I was about 10 years old the kids in the neighbourhood all saw what they called a “flying saucer.” Well, there certainly was an unusual-looking something overhead. An older kid got out his binoculars and informed us solemnly that he could see mice on the saucer. Now this was getting too weird for me, even in my 10-year-old naivety.  Of course it turned out that the strange object was a weather balloon. The “mice” were probably the blurry “circles of confusion” you see when something is not quite in focus.

Well, if you lean to the “conspiracy” side of interpreting events, you could always blame anything you see in the sky that you don’t understand on secret military weapons research. I’m not even going to go near the “testimony” of those who have been abducted and sodomized by aliens. I am fairly certain that rare meteorological events can be readily misunderstood. Imagine what the first persons to see the aurora borealis must have concluded.

However, in the end, I will admit that there are some things that people experience that just can’t be explained away—yet.

Now, in case you forgot, I italicized the words believe in in my second paragraph. I’ve always had trouble understanding questions like: Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you believe in evolution? Do you believe that God is going to strike dead everyone you disapprove of? Speaking of that last point, I once attended a religious service where the church was between ministers, so a lay person took over the services. Unfortunately, the chosen lay-person in this case was senile; she couldn’t read a passage from the Bible without getting it backwards; and, generally, her “sermons” made no sense and were completely disconnected from the Scripture readings. This particular Sunday she informed us that she had a very sad story to tell.

Apparently, a life-long friend of hers was dying. The friend confessed that she could never quite “believe” no matter how hard she tried. Our pseudo-minister then clucked her tongue and told us it was unfortunate that her friend had to go to Hell because she hadn’t tried hard enough to “believe.”

Seemed to me that the friend was putting a lot more effort into it than the preacher who, apparently, never had experienced a moment’s doubt—ever.

So, anyhow, was does this believe in actually mean?

Do I believe in love at first sight? Well, I know that sometimes a couple will experience a strong attraction to each other on first meeting. But, I ask, how many of those “instant-infatuations” evolve into a deeper and more committed relationship? I mean, I think that love means a deep commitment that survives more than one evening.

Do I believe in evolution? How can one mix “belief” and “knowledge?” I know that many think that the phrase “scientific theory” means that it is just a casual opinion that some scientists hold, making any  “theory,” no matter how far removed from reality, equally valid and worthy of consideration.  However, the word “theory” in this context has a very specific meaning that has nothing to do with opinions; its meaning in science is that it is a hypothesis that has been tested many times in many different situations and is yet to be proven incorrect. It verges on being a “scientific law,” but still leaves an opening for an exceptional case.  It’s a long ways from that to “I believe the universe was created in six days.” (And, by the way, speaking of universal scientific laws, Newton’s “laws of motion” have turned out to not be so universal after all.) As for evolution, there are millions, if not hundreds of millions, of pieces of evidence that all support this “theory” that has yet to be proven to be incorrect in any meaningful way. (Other than by misunderstanding and misapplying some random quotations from ancient books.)

 Do I believe that God is going to strike dead everyone you disapprove of? This one simply doesn’t make any sense to me. If God went about killing everyone anyone who was not approved of by someone who professed to be a “believer,” there wouldn’t be anyone left. Not only, if you do believe in a loving personal God who taught that we should forgive each other our grievances, then how can you reconcile that with God stepping in to kill those very people that he said you are supposed to forgive? Ah, the mysteries of fundamentalist theology!  What is a poor simple member of the “Holiest Church of the Only True Redeeming Saviour” to do when he encounters a practicing Hindu? Is he supposed to welcome him, feed him, make him feel at home, as the Bible that I read instructs? Or is he to kill him on the spot because he is a “sinner,” a “heathen,” and an “unbeliever?” Tough one, but fortunately the “believers” do not feel compelled to answer questions posed by “unbelievers,” so it is very unlikely that we will ever get a complete answer to that one. (Other than being quoted misunderstood and misapplied random phrases from some very old books.)

So, there you have it: yes, I believe that there are many things—even some things in the sky—that have yet to be explained in any sort of reasonable way. I guess we could call those events “Unidentified Flying Objects” for lack of a better name. But aliens?—whether obsessed with sodomy or with “universal peace” (some both at the same time)—no, not in my universe. Maybe in yours, but, that’s another story altogether. 

Time Travel on a Beautiful June Afternoon

It is late June—an absolutely glorious day. Low 20’s, a gentle breeze, a few fluffy clouds. I can hear only the wind in the trees, a bit of traffic noise, and the birds as I quietly paint the back deck. It reminds me of childhood days when no friends were around. I’d play with a toy truck or some such, all the while wondering about the big questions of life. What is “forever?” What is the “I” that observes everything? “How old and how big is the universe?” Those kinds of questions.

So, today, on a day very similar to such days when I was a child, I ruminate as I paint. Today my question to myself is “Is time travel possible?” I hate to break it to you…. After all, we have much enjoyed stories where time travel is a feature for a long time—both in literature and in movies.  But, the sad news is: time travel within the context of our universe is impossible. Doesn’t matter whether you are going forwards in time, or back—it just can’t be done.

There is one “sort-of” exception. According to relativity, the faster an object moves the slower time passes for that object. Actually, that is verifiable; apparently the satellites that control GPS have to be constantly adjusted to make up for the fact that time is slower on them than it is for a stationary object on earth. It is enough of a difference that unless these adjustments were made, positions would drift by about 10 km a day.  Look it up if you don’t believe me. So, if one travelled in a spaceship at very fast speeds for a few months (spaceship time), on the return to earth a hundred or so years might have passed. In a sense, forward time travel is possible—but there is absolutely no way back.

Oh, I know the old arguments: men have said we could never fly…travel to the moon…explore the deepest oceans…climb Everest…build machines that can perform billions of calculations in a second and potentially connect everyone in the world. All we need is the right technology.

Misunderstanding of the meaning of the space-time continuum that physicists and cosmologists describe leads to some false assumptions. It stand to reason that if we can freely travel in any of the other three dimensions—even all of them at the same time—we ought to be able to travel through the fourth dimension at will. We get confused because if we travel in any—or all—of the three basic directions, we will arrive at a location different than our present position; in other words: some place other than “here.” What we are doing is moving our three-dimensional selves from one coordinate to another. Some would say that if it takes us ten minutes to accomplish that readjustment of our coordinates then we have travelled through ten minutes of time as well.

No, we haven’t.

Whether we move our bodies from one location to another during that ten minute interval or we remain at rest makes no difference as far as the time dimension is concerned. Time marches on, as they say. Some scientists describe time as an arrow pointing in one direction. They complicate it by adding concepts like entropy (a word taken from thermodynamics), but, however they muddle the concept it still boils down to one directional travel—or something. Though many equations work just as well backwards as they do forwards, in our universe an egg dropped on the floor does not reassemble itself and hop back into our hand complete. We simply cannot treat time as if it were a film strip that we can play in reverse for our amusement.

Paradoxes exist only in our minds; they do not occur in nature. If we observe that a photon seems to be in two different places simultaneously that indicates that we haven’t quite grasped the concepts of space and coordinates yet. Then there’s the old chestnut of going back in time and murdering your grandfather before your father was conceived. If you do so, then you don’t exist; and, if you don’t exist, then you cannot go back in time and murder your grandfather….and around and around we go looking for clever ways to get out of our dilemma.

The fatal flaw in our thinking, when it comes to time travel, is in thinking that the past exists somewhere and the future exists somewhere else—and so what we are doing by passing time is moving from a “past place” towards a “future place.”  Okay, I ask, where are these “past places” and “future places”? If they have a concrete existence then, yes, it may be possible to move from one to the other and visa versa. But, do they? What, exactly, is the “past?” Or, better yet, where is it? I’ve read scientific descriptions of it as if time were a loaf of bread that contains all events—and that we can experience past and future events by cutting the slice of bread-time at an angle. I think it is a bit difficult to physically affect a metaphor by using another metaphor, but, that’s just in the world that I inhabit. I know there are many out these who treat metaphors, such as “the creator,” as if they were physical entities. Does thinking make it so?

Well, if you go along with respected philosophers like Emmanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason), and physicists like Werner Heisenberg (observation causes the collapse of probability) then you must realize that nothing has an existence independent of our experience of it—at least in any form that we can recognize.  “Reality” is the construct that our brain uses to reference and catalogue the bombardment of sensory signals that it is constantly receiving. Our brains frame our experience of time within the context of movement. But, does it really have an existence independent of our experience of it? If it does, then is the future thus preordained? Everything that can happen has happened? I sincerely have a lot of trouble with that concept. Where did free-will go then? Are we just automata following pathways that have been prepared ahead of time?

Some talk of alternate universes, where every possibility has fruition. That means that even the smallest action that I take creates a complete universe where I did not take that action. I have a bit of a problem accepting that. It seems to me that it is just another clever way of getting out of the paradox of murdering one’s grandfather before one’s father has been conceived. To suggest that both events happened—the murder and the later conception—even if in different universes (or space-time continuums to get fancy) is evading the question of what is time, really?

Do all “pasts” exist somewhere? Is there a definitive past? I’m sure that each of us likes to believe that our memories of past events represent a physical reality. But, where is this “past” located? Photos, journals, videos, artefacts, etc. do not prove that a past “exists” now. What we are looking at, when we look at such things, is in the present.

So, stripping away all wishful thinking, we are left with the proposition that neither the future nor the past has a “real” existence that we could, possibly, travel to. I think that the “past” goes “poof!” as soon as it stops being the “present.” It hasn’t “gone” anywhere—it just ceases being. Yes, we have recordings of things that happened in the past, but, when the recordings were made the “past” was really a “present.”   If I write a word “now,” that “now” cannot possibly be the same “now” when you read it. The “now” when I wrote the word is long gone. So, we can have records of “past” events, but, they were really “present” events when they happened.

Same as the future. It does not exist. Except, in the sense of potential. There is a good possibility that at some point in the future I will stop writing this paragraph. A pretty good possibility that I will eat a meal later in the day—and that I will go to sleep sometime during the night and that the sun will rise tomorrow. But, none of those things has an existence “now.” They might happen; they might not.  A chunk of ice could fall from an overhead airplane and knock my brains out so that I will not experience any of those events. But, in no case is there a physical place where a chunk of ice is falling towards my head or where I will wrap this up, eat a meal, go to sleep later, and then awake to a new day all having happened “already” just waiting for me to experience them.

The only “real” thing we can count on is the ever-present present and even that will no longer exist when we die.

Here’s the algorithm:

Future –>	Now –>	Past
Possible events –>	Occurrence of specific event –>	Done
Non-existent probabilities. (Potential)	Experience; expression. Potential collapses into existence.	Nothing. It’s all gone.