Monday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Are you serious?”

Lindsay Lohan speaking to the judge that sentenced her to 90 days in the joint for violating her probation on a DUI charge. She went to the joint. Obviously the judge was serious.

If I seem disjointed recently it is because I am bearing an emotional cross right now.

Us this prerequisite for who you will vote for 16 months from now. Who do you want to be the Commander in Chief of our military that could be involved in a nuclear war?

I was watching a program about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. One cosmologist suggested that if the right molecules of the appropriate chemicals joined together (totally by chance) to form certain types of amino acids and other chemicals mixed in then life is possible. I cannot fathom that a conglomeration of chemicals in the right ratio will produce a being that will try to replicate itself. That simply does not compute. Because of my engineering experiences anything that operates rationally must have planning and a blueprint...that requires thought. Who's thought? We have all heard of a thing called “the spark of life”. I cannot and will never believe that “life” resulting in a brain capable of abstract thought is spontaneous. The concept of reproduction by cell division is no accident. I guess I am dancing around the idea that in my opinion anything that has the “spark of life” requires a creator. Here is further evidence. In China, Egypt and even what is now the American southwest, among millions of other examples, at the same time in history both the Chinese, Egyptians and Comanche buried their dead with accouterments to help them through the “afterlife” or “another journey”. How did that seed of thought get planted universally? I have asked others this question and have heard “Everyone has a fear of death”. OK, where did that thought come from that everyone wants to preserve that “spark of life”? That concept is also universal. They have no answer for that. The will to live is not accidental...what is it then?

At the risk of going against my personal rule of staying away from religion and arousing plethora of different opinions, I am going to report what I read about what a Charlotte newspaper reporter said about his visit with the Charlotte Society of Atheists and Agnostics. Recently this society put a billboard on Billy Graham Parkway showing the phrase “one nation under God” with the “under God” struck through and another phrase saying “one nation indivisible” under it. This phrase was how it was written originally and “under God” was added in the 1950’s. The sign was vandalized overnight, as you might suspect. The society holds a monthly meeting of about 70 people at a neighborhood tavern and you can guess that is main topic of conversation. Even though it is not enforced, there is a section of the North Carolina Constitution that says “a person that does not believe in God cannot hold public office”. That is a clear violation of the United States Constitution and the society points this out. At their meetings the society wears name tags with just their first names on them knowing if their full names were known they would be subject to prejudicial treatment by their bosses or fellow workers at their places of employment or even in their neighborhoods. They say that they as a group nationwide deserves acknowledgment stating that statistics show that there are as many people that are either atheists or agnostics in America as there is Mormons, Jews or Muslims. I personally have no sympathy. I believe that what you believe along those lines is an intensely personal one and is not for display. I will say this: Many people say that this is a “Christian” nation but that is not what some of our founding fathers believed including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Ben Franklin. They were attendees of Joseph Priestley’s Unitarian church in Philadelphia. Priestly believed that there is a God but did not believe that Jesus Christ was supernatural. That makes them Deists, not “Christian”. A Christian by definition is a follower of Jesus Christ. Not only that, there were many Jews that were founders of this great nation. By the way, Mormons believe that Jesus Christ existed and visited them when they were in settlements near the Isthmus of Panama...if I read their Bible (The Book of Mormon) correctly...and I have read it cover to cover. That is all I have to say about that.

This Date in History August 3

1958 Earlier in 1948 a US navy advocate of nuclear power, Captain Hyman Rickover, took command of the nuclear powered submarine program for the US Navy. The keel for the first nuclear submarine was laid by President Harry Truman in the ship building yards at Groton, Connecticut. Finally, in 1954 First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across the bow of America’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. This submarine could stay submerged for months undetected. The nuclear power plant needed no air nor water and only a very small amount of nuclear fuel. The principal was simple. The power plant was simply used to convert water into steam and the steam was directed through a turbine which turned the propeller and provided power and water to the crew. The water that was used to make the steam was captured, condensed and reheated in a continuous circuit. The Nautilus went through strenuous sea trials and proved to be all that she was advertised. The US Navy was very interested in the quickest route from Europe to the Orient without going through the Panama Canal. A few days earlier the Nautilus, commanded by Captain William Anderson, had departed Hawaii on “Operation Northwest Passage”. The Nautilus surfaced only once in the Bering sea to do a radar check and then submerged and went under the Arctic Ocean ice pack, by the north pole and surfaced between Sptizbergen and Greenland on August 5. This time was a hell of a lot better that the time it took to go through the Panama Canal. Captain Anderson was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Eisenhower. After 500,000 miles at sea, the Nautilus was decommissioned and is now a museum attraction at Groton, Connecticut.

1492 On this date Christopher Columbus departed Palos, Spain with three ships headed for “The Orient and the Spice Islands”. The ships were the Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina. In spite of popular legend, the academia of that era in Europe knew that the earth was a sphere; the only problem was they had seriously underestimated the circumference. They had estimated that the Earth was 7,000 mile in circumference rather than the actual 24,000 miles. The reason for this error is that they did not know the Pacific Ocean existed. When Columbus sighted land on October 12, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, he thought he was in the orient. When he sighted Cuba he though it was China and he thought Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) might be mainland Japan. In all Columbus made four trips to the New World but died before realizing what he had discovered would later make Spain the most powerful nation on earth and that was because of the looted Maya, Inca and Aztec gold and silver brought home by Spanish conquistadors.

Born today:

1905 US writer and “Grey Panthers” advocate Maggie Kuhn. Her advice for staying young was “Keep up learning and sex until rigor mortis.” Maggie was a horny old girl for the great majority of her 90 years on the planet.

        Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow