Outlandish Beliefs

I am constantly staggered by the things that people believe.

Staggered.

Let’s start with something simple.

There is, even now, a ‘Flat Earth Society’. No, really. There is. Hopefully it is a jest. Hopefully these are people, like ‘Trekkies’, who are merely seeking a bit of fun out of life. (http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/)

No.

There are those who put forward the hypothesis that the Earth is, really, flat.

Terry Pratchett must be so proud that his ‘Discworld’ series is taken to heart so literally.

I wonder if the ‘Flat Earth’ people also suggest that there are four elephants...

Then there are those who tell us, hand on heart, that there is a ‘Twin Earth’ orbiting the Sun that, not unnaturally, hides it from us. This ‘other Earth’ will, it seems, ultimately cause our demise through some method known only to the believers in it.

It would appear that the origin of this was in Putnam’s ‘Thought Experiment’ that was taken rather too seriously by some people.

Fortunately, this idea seems to be taken a little less to heart.

Of course, the idea of someone having a notion and that notion being taken to an extreme belief system is not so far fetched.

Imagine aliens living in a volcano, perhaps several volcanoes, around the Earth.

To be perfectly honest with you I am not sure how these volcanic aliens fit into the scheme of things, only that we are all, it seems, thetans who have lived on alien worlds in the past and forgotten what we once were.

Fortunately, this information can be revealed to us if we deposit considerable sums in US Dollars into the bank vaults of the Scientology leadership.

Back in the late forties or very early fifties, L Ron Hubbard (the Father of Scientology) said, “You don’t get rich writing sci-fi novels at 5¢ a word. You only get rich by inventing a religion.” Which he did.

Amazing coincidence, that.

Neil deGrasse-Tyson, who is a noted Astrophysicist and one of the smartest men alive, tells us that a New Jersey Teacher instructed her class (did it HAVE to be a ‘her’?) that ‘evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s Ark carried dinosaurs’.

Now enter the First Amendment. This is a crock but, never mind, it goes like this:

“The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from Government interference. Freedom of expression consists of the rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, and the implied rights of association and belief.  The Supreme Court interprets the extent of the protection afforded to these rights. The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. Furthermore, the Court has interpreted, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendment from interference by state governments.”

This tells you that this teacher has the right to tell her class anything she likes even though it is not scientifically correct.

What will those children grow up to become? Bigots? Ignoramuses? Some sort of modern Luddite?

Fearsome.

There are so many more to choose from but I think I should like to finish up on my favourite.

Aliens.

Specifically, ‘Alien Abduction’, but we should never cover that on its own

Let’s start with the idea that aliens have, in fact, visited us.

Why?

Why would aliens come here?

Why would aliens spend vast fortunes travelling through interstellar space to just buzz us and then go away without contacting us?

The information about visiting aliens is withheld from us.  It appears that this secrecy is part of a Government conspiracy? Whose Government? It seems that most aliens conspire to visit the United States – those that abduct people anyway.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that the amount of people who would be involved in such a conspiracy could keep quiet over such a long period of time.

There is no conspiracy. We are too keen to develop and believe in conspiracy theories maybe as a result of watching ‘The X-Files’. The truth is out there but it may not be what you want to hear!

Perhaps aliens are aware that we Earthlings, specifically Americans, have a tendency to shoot first and then ask questions afterwards. Or is that more ‘Hollywood’?

The thing about these abductions, for me, is that most of them only seem to come to the light of day after hypnosis by an ‘expert’.

Apart from the idea that nearly all abductions are carried out in the dead of night when the brightness of their ship would seem to make them, the aliens, most likely to stand out and be noticed, why do they bring these people back?

Why double the risk of discovery?

The people that are ‘abducted’ seem to have no memory, until the hypnosis part, of what happened or why they were abducted. What is that all about? What profit would the aliens get from wiping the memory of the abductees?

All the items retrieved from abducted people have originated on Earth. There has been nothing retrieved that came from ‘out there’. Nothing.

How do we know this?

Because anything that came from another star system will, of necessity, contain different isotopes from anything here on Earth. It will be different.

This is why, if you are abducted, you should distract the aliens’ attention and grab an ashtray, or something, as a souvenir (idea courtesy of Neil deGrasse-Tyson who, as previously stated, is brilliant). Then it can be analysed and your story will be believed.

So far? Nothing. No souvenirs, no implanted and mysterious devices. Nothing.

Curiously, on a parallel note, there are people who specialise in restoring memories of childhood abuse. This is very dangerous. Very.

One poor fellow was jailed on this evidence for abusing his daughter – it was a false allegation that was only discovered after he had been in prison for some time. Then, of course, there are always the people who believe that there is no smoke without fire...

Now. Let’s just play with this for a moment.

Why don’t we get the ‘Alien Abduction’ specialists to hypnotise the people suspected of being abused as children? And, of course, vice versa.

Perhaps we should discover that there are hundreds of people who were abused by aliens...

Then we should see where the Mudd* sticks.

[*Samuel Mudd was implicated, falsely, in the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Even though he was found innocent and cleared of all charges in the conspiracy suspicion was heaped on him from the general population thereafter. Hence, “His name was Mudd” and “Mudd sticks”.]

And people think sci-fi is far-fetched. You only have to go out and stand in the garden for a while.

Tracker

Consciousness gradually returned. He could feel rough carpet under his back and turned slightly to ease a cramp that was beginning to twinge in his left calf muscle. A sharp pain stabbed through his back near the top of his spine and brought him to full wakefulness.

He looked up, still uncomfortable with the pain, and saw her looking down at him. Tall, shapely and beautiful. The memory of her came back to him in a rush.

He rolled onto his side and the memory of his back being cut and stitched returned but there were no memories beyond that.

He held up his hand hoping that she would take it and help him to his feet but she shook her head, a tear rolled softly down her smooth right cheek highlighting her luminous brown eyes.

Grimacing with pain he managed to ease himself up to a standing position. He reached out to wipe the tear away but his hand passed through her face. He nearly overbalanced stepping back in shock. His legs were still not working properly.

“You are not here?”

“I am not,” she looked so sad.

“I remember you.”

“That makes me happier,” she smiled a weak smile.

“Where are you? How are you appearing so real before me?”

“There is a device in your back. They call it a ‘Tracker’. I see everything you see and ‘they’ see everything I see.”

He could hear the slight emphasis on ‘they’, “Do you have a ‘Tracker’?”

“No. I am in a tank. They call it a ‘sensory deprivation tank’. I am breathing through a tube.”

“Then how am I seeing you?”

“You are not. I am in your mind. I am being transmitted to you through the ‘Tracker’.”

“I only remember you and the operation on my back. What is happening? What do they want?”

“You will be given instructions, through me, from time to time. Until then I do not know either.”

“Do you know me? Do you remember?”

“Yes. I remember it all.”

He shook his head. There were no memories. He could feel her warmth, her touch light on his skin but there was no name, no location, no time.

There was a small mirror in the bathroom. He tried to see the wound but the operation was too close to his spine to see anything by twisting around. There was no reflection of her in the mirror.

“Perhaps you are a vampire,” he joked with her.

“If I was a vampire I could not look in the mirror and see a reflection so how would I do my hair?” she joked back at him.

“Vampires must be very scruffy individuals,” he considered.

He walked towards the door picking up a bag of golf clubs as he passed the threshold. They seemed very heavy and didn’t rattle or jostle each other when he hefted them onto his shoulder. Instinctively he wanted to rest them down and examine them but he was unable to do so, his feet kept moving him out of the door.

He negotiated the two flights of stairs with some difficulty; his legs were still weak and shaky, carrying the bag of clubs was not helping him.

“How did I get up here? Are you nearby?” he asked of her.

“I do not know. I have no information about where you are now nor do I know how you arrived where you are. I only know where I am and how I came here.”

He stepped out of the door into bright sunlight. No clouds, a warm day.

“I must be a bad person,” he said to her.

“Why do you suppose that?” she replied.

“I am being punished for something.”

“We have no knowledge of that. Perhaps it is that you are being rewarded.”

“You are imprisoned in a tank. That cannot be a good thing.”

“It is not uncomfortable. ‘They’ tell me it will not be for long.”

“Who are ‘they’?” he asked her.

“I do not know that, either.”

“You remember everything.”

“I remember being abducted as were you.”

They lapsed into silence for a while. She walked beside him casting no shadow in the bright sunshine. He was comfortable in her nearness.

He considered her image for a while, “I remember touching you. Your skin is smooth and silky.”

“Thank you. I enjoyed that. You were very gentle.”

Another silence while they basked in each other’s company.

They walked for nearly half an hour, making several turns.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I know not,” she replied.

“Why are we going this way, then?”

“There is no choice. This is the way ‘they’ wish you to go.”

“Perhaps I should choose a different direction.”

“How will you know it is different? You will go where ‘they’ want you to go.”

“What are we to do when we arrive?”

“How will we know that we have arrived?” she said.

He thought about that. Then he asked her, “Do you know what I am thinking?”

“I am in your mind.”

“Yes. Then?” he frowned, briefly.

“Yes.”

“I must be careful what I’m thinking.”

Her laugh was full and throaty like a mature woman who knows her worth to a man, “You have rude thoughts but they are about me so I am entertained,” she paused for a moment and then said, “We are here.”

“Where? Anywhere is ‘here’ if that is where you are at the time.”

“You must turn left into this doorway and go up the stairs,” she explained.

“If I do not?”

She gazed at the floor for a several moments before looking directly into his eyes, “You will be compelled to do as you are told. If you fail I will be allowed to die.”

“I do not wish to sound cold-hearted but how do I know you are not already dead? How do I know you exist at all? If ‘they’ can block my memories then ‘they’ can insert memories of ‘their’ making. Why do you not tell me who ‘they’ are’?”

“I am real. We are short of time. You must go up to that door and enter.”

He tried to resist. One step away from the door; the pain hit him hard. She screamed, eyes wide with fear. His right leg gave way so that he sank to the ground resting on the golf clubs.

“Sciatica, Mate? My brother was a martyr to it. Want a hand, do you?” a passer-by proffered him an open hand.

He took it and got up, “Thank you. I shall just go and rest in that doorway for a while.”

“Right you are, Mate. Sure you don’t want an ambulance, or something?”

“No, no. I shall be fine. Thank you. You are kind.”

The stranger smiled and walked on.

“We must hurry. Time is short.”

He took a deep breath and entered the door. He was faced with a flight of stairs. His back was still painful. He shifted the clubs to the other side to ease the pressure on the Tracker.

Five flights of stairs. Gasping for breath he stood in front of a locked door.

“I need a drink. I am dehydrating.”

“In the bag. Water. Small pocket at the top contains a key.”

He put the bag down and found the water. Two bottles. He drained one of them in two long draughts and then searched the small pocket. A standard door key, he tried it in the lock. It fitted and turned easily. He went into the room.

It was a small flat. Empty except for rugs, tables and chairs.

“Why did I have to walk here? I could, just as easily, been left here to wake up in the first place.”

“True. They wanted us to become better acquainted.”

“Are we not already acquainted? According to you and ‘their’ version of my memory we were very well acquainted.”

“It is ‘their’ plan. Not mine. You must open the bag.”

He shook his head wondering why he would want golf clubs five floors up from the ground.

He slid out the contents of the bag onto the floor and looked at it with bewilderment.

It was a disassembled half-inch sniper’s rifle with telescopic sights.

“What do I do with this? I have no idea about these things.”

“You do. You were a sharpshooter in the Army. You were—are, an expert.”

“What am I to do with it assuming that I can assemble it?”

“You can assemble it. Then you are to shoot someone.”

He sat back on his haunches, aghast, “Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. You are to do it.”

“You will die if I refuse?”

“Yes.”

“An innocent person will die if I do not refuse?”

“That is not our concern.”

“It is mine. I am faced with a paradox. If you do not exist other than in some specious memory then the threat means nothing and so I will be killing a man for nothing. If you do exist and I kill this man then how do I know that ‘they’ will let you live knowing what you do?”

“The instruction said that ‘they’ would let us go.”

He shook his head, “What does that mean, really?”

The assembled gun was very long. He mounted it on the bipod and took up a prone position with it, surprised at how comfortable and natural it felt.

“So I am a bad person.”

“No. You are a good person.”

“And yet this gun feels, what? Right?” he peered through the sights at a pigeon on a roof some way away, “How can I be a good person if I can use something like this?”

He looked directly at her. She was standing to his right, looking out of the window, thinking. She was so beautiful it took his breath away to see her in that soft light, tantalisingly close and yet so distant from his touch.

“You were....” she started to say and then glanced around fearfully as if someone was threatening her, “You were always good. Always. But you cannot speak out against ‘them’. ‘They’ will catch you and punish you. Somehow ‘they’ always know. ‘They’ will win.”

She looked frightened.

He found himself opening the window. He felt almost robotic as if someone else was operating him by remote control, which they were. His were only minor adjustments to make. ‘They’ would always make the big moves.

He set the gun up on a table by the window so that he had a good view downwards with no view from below of the muzzle. He brought another table up to lie on and put rugs on the table in the hope that they would help to prevent him sliding about although the tables were far from highly polished.

Down below there was a large crowd. There was no great angle on the shot because he could now see that the target zone was around seven hundred metres.

“Seven hundred and eighty four metres from this point to the lectern,” She told him.

“I still have to allow for the drop on the shot,” he told her, hoping that the sights were poorly set. Clearly, there was no time for a sighting shot.

A woman stood at the lectern. Late fifties, perhaps early sixties. Smart, assured, composed.

“Shoot her,” she said.

“Has she spoken out against ‘them’?” he asked.

“I know not.”

He sighted, squeezed. The rifle punched him in the shoulder. The target gasped and held her chest. There was no movement from the crowd for several seconds. The target collapsed behind the lectern, out of his view. Hundreds of eyes turned towards the sound of the shot. Security scrambled.

Agony racked him. He felt warm blood trickling down his back. He was paralysed.

She screamed, “I am dead!” and screamed again.

His memories came flooding back. He saw her face and remembered.

“I love you,” he thought out loud.

An overwhelming blackness engulfed him.

And then there was nothing.

Misapprehensions

Very often, when we write about something, we make assumptions. These assumptions may be perfectly honest in that we earnestly believe them to be true but, really, it is because we want them to be true.

How often do we do any research to make sure that what we have said, in public, is true?

Veering away from the beliefs and faith systems of people in general, for therein lies a pit of vipers for the unwary, let’s look at a couple of widely held ideas and something that came up on ‘Facebook’ a short while ago.

Let’s start with that one.

When it comes to plants and things botanical, there are several people on ‘Facebook’ who are experts. They may not have degrees and hold high-level jobs in the industry but they may be considered ‘enthusiastic amateurs’. For this reason they can be, mostly, trusted.

In this thought I may include Hadassah Chen and Martin Shim amongst several others whom I hold in high regard for their keenness, photography and knowledge. Jc Tan and Green John Chan, similarly, take wonderful photos of their jaunts around SE Asia and Norman al-K, the bug man, is a valuable resource for things insectoid. These people are knowledgeable. Their views are respected.

Then there is the fellow who posted a photograph of several vials of a dark, almost black, liquid claiming it to be cannabis oil. He then further claimed that it will cure all manner of cancers by virtue of its high concentration of THC’s.

Now let’s stop and think about this.

We know, because the United Nations tell us, that cannabis (by any other name) is the most widely used illegal drug in the world.

Users tell us, quite volubly, that it is perfectly safe and non-addictive.

Fine.

So every Government in the World, with few exceptions, is incredibly stupid and ill-read on the subject of marijuana. Only the people who use it are experts.

Carl Sagan was brilliant. He had a mind that most of us who are familiar with his work hold in high esteem if not actual awe. He smoked cannabis. Supporters of the ‘legalise cannabis brigade’ will hold this up as proof that the drug should be legalised – and make no mistake, it is a drug.

Now let Carl Sagan continue, “I took it rarely because I liked the effect it had on me. It gave me, while under the influence, wonderful ideas. I just wish I could remember those ideas when the effect wore off.”

He took it rarely. He was aware that it had adverse effects on his mind. He was smart.

Just one more thing about cannabis (shall I mention that the people in olden days that smoked it through a Hookah to cool it then went off to kill someone. They were Hashishins from which we get ‘assassins’. Hmm. No. Best leave that alone.) The amount of tars in marijuana is greater than the tars in nicotine. That means that the smoke and tars in cannabis is at least as likely to give you lung cancer as ‘normal’ cigarettes.

Shall we go back to the fellow with the vials of THC concentrate?

From whence did he get his information that this will cure cancer? He didn’t say. Is he able to present trials with a standard test group comparing the effectivity against Chemotherapy and other treatments? It seems not.

Yet he felt free to post this on a public page on ‘Facebook’.

The cruelty of this is unimaginable. People with cancer may get a rush of (false?) hope rising in their chests only for it to be, potentially, dashed.

Cannabis is a poison, it is a drug and, for the most part, an illegal one for good reason. Prescribed THC’s are good. There is no reason why the amounts meted out to individuals should not be supplied and controlled for those who need it in the same way as other prescription drugs – all of which have side-effects (like it or not). Casual, indiscriminate use is a bad thing as anyone with a rational mind will realise as, for example, Carl Sagan realised.

Putting false information out for public viewing is risky. Make sure you get it right before typing in your ‘Tweets’, ‘Facebook’ posts or ‘Blogs’. I can back up my information with learned papers on the subject so I know that I am on safe ground. I have also seen, at first hand, the effects of various proscribed drugs. None of those effects are pretty.

Let’s have a look at a couple of other misconceptions. Something that is a little more light-hearted this time.

Thanksgiving Day.

A grand tradition in the US of A. Much beloved by Americans the world over – and why not?

Because it is British.

The British started it and then, when America became... well... America they took it over. That would be over a hundred years later.

Nevertheless, we hope you enjoy just another tradition and custom handed to you by your ancestors from those little islands over the water that you know so little about.

We are, on the other hand curious to know why you celebrate all that you have and how satisfied you are with what you have and then, almost immediately, rush out on Black Friday to spend untold millions on stuff that, for the most part, you probably don’t need.

Ah, viva le capitalisme!

While we speak of the British-ness of the USA let’s look at another small thing.

The American War of Independence.

Roll of drums, please, and a blast on the trumpets to introduce ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, which is the National Anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy’s ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "The Anacreontic Song" (or “To Anacreon in Heaven”), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States.

The War of 1812 was short but fairly complex in its issues – probably including a desire by the US to annex Canada.

Now we step back a bit.

There were no Americans in the War of Independence. America did not, then exist. The war was about the British Colonists revolting against the King because he was taxing them heavily and yet refusing them representation in the British Parliament. “No taxation without representation” was the cry. America and the constitution of the United States did not exist until after the War of Independence.

Something else to thank those wonderful British people for giving you.

Just a final thought. Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana for 15 million dollars cash plus loan cancellation. That purchase was, very likely, unconstitutional but it got France out and opened up New Orleans as a port and gave the US access to the Mississippi. Louisiana as an addition to the United States doubled the area of what was then America. It has subsequently been split up into other States but, then, it was huge.

The US can thank the Napoleonic Wars for getting that because of the debt France had at that time.

A bit of research saves time and embarrassment whatever you are writing.

Especially if you are writing about things that give people hope.

[Postscript: Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Just in case you wondered.]

Armageddon at the Speed of Light

  

Almost lost in the vast darkness of space were small muzzy blots of pale light.  Universes.  Scattered here and there across the eternity of emptiness at distances incomprehensible to mortal mind.

Here, in the middle of where we are which is a place with neither name nor location, is a black hole.  A black hole that exists only once in every countless billions of years, which is time as we count it but that has no record here.  This black hole is the size of a galaxy.

Invisible other than a place where there is no view of distant universes it is a total absence of light in a place where there is no light.

Inside the black hole there is war being waged.  It is a war between heat and gravity.  Gravity is reaching down into the bowels of the black hole to crush and snuff out the heat that is creating expansion to press against the gravity it abhors.

The core has elements heavier than any found elsewhere, heavier by far than gold, uranium or lead.  Elements unknown fusing and twisting in the battle.  This is a place where hydrogen and helium are heavy metals, solid but writhing and twisting, trying to escape the relentless pressure.

Gravity presses ever harder but succeeds only in creating more fusion, more heat to add to the army of the adiabatic processes contorting the deep interior.

Outside, the black hole desperately sucks every drop of matter it can find to cool itself.  There is nothing left but dark matter that has no concern for the war raging within; it remains neutral--an impassive observer awaiting the inevitable that it has seen before but can never remember.

Expansion continues.  Slowly but ever so surely it uses every degree of tens of millions in Centigrade and Fahrenheit to push back at the confining cage of gravity.  Searing heat and yet all elements are solids under the pressure; iron and carbon twisting in oxygen and silicon interlocking and unbending and prising themselves loose where there is no looseness to be gained.

Waves of heat, contraction and expansion, pulse outwards.  The black hole shudders.  For three and a half millennia it quakes.

Gravity feels itself breaking.  It’s fingers twine themselves around the core in a last attempt to wrest control, the fingers are forced open.  One last effort, it spins the black hole hoping for a coriolis effect to even out the heat and so weaken its resolve.  With massive effort the galaxy sized black hole starts to ponderously rotate.  Rapidly, in less than one and a half billion years, it builds up to such a spin as to cause the sides to bulge outwards.

Heat pretends to cooperate.  Centripetal forces retard the spread of heat outwards towards the equatorial plane.

Too late, gravity realises it has sown the seeds of its own destruction.  A weakness, a thinning of the gravitic fields at the poles.

In less than another millennia heat sees its escape and grasps the opportunity by inserting tentacular feelers into the polar regions.  Nanoseconds later there is a cataclysmic explosion.  Unimaginably vast and yet silent as the grave.

Shock waves sear out across the emptiness, trailing relieved clouds of hydrogen and helium.  They drag other, lighter, elements which bring more, slightly heavier, elements with them until gold and uranium join the race for freedom at the tail end.  The heaviest elements cannot escape.  Wailing noiselessly at the lost opportunity they are seized by gravity and held where they are, locked in a tug-of-war between the escaping entropic heat and the grasping gravity fields.

The equatorial regions of the black hole are intact.  They slowly collapse inwards in an attempt to reform the black hole but still light, matter, escape in a jet raging outwards and away, pursuing their own freedoms, in a narrow ‘V’ shape from each pole.

Two embryonic universes form each side of the black hole.

At their union some of the heaviest elements form globes the size of many stars.  So dense that their molecules and atoms rub each other as they vibrate creating more heat.  They shimmer and ripple fighting the huge gravitational forces that drag them inexorably but imperceptibly back towards the gaping maws of the collapsing black hole.

The heaviest elements of all of them are still trapped in the centre of the roiling mass of material engaged in the interminable battle between heat and gravity.  Their atoms are crushed into solid blocks of neutrons, protons and quarks.  Electrons draw wakes as they struggle across the surfaces of combined molecules.

Tardyons and tachyons gyrate and squirm, some escape but most are being dragged back into the war.

Far from the black hole the elements revel in their freedom and come together in joyous union to form clumps and clouds of material that are foci for new galaxies and nebulae.  Heat is working, free to flow, happy in its freedom and sad for the heat that remains behind to fight on.

The great black hole, diminished but still gargantuan, begins its final crushing defeat of the enemy.  The heaviest elements are now moving perceptibly and relentlessly towards the closing poles of the black hole.  Nothing now escapes.  An increasing sphere of blackness surrounds the black hole as the last elements to escape flee the scene.

Raging in anger, gravity hauls on the remaining masses outside its walls and wrests them from their places, sucking them into its hard centre; incorporating them into the seething, solid mass.  Their final rush into the black hole gives gravity its last opportunity for revenge.

As the poles close on the inrushing heavy elements the black hole releases a vast jet of pure radiation energy in both directions.

The jet screams silently through both universes collecting more energy from the heat sources it finds and extinguishes.  It leaves behind it only blackened cinders of lifeless, energy-less atoms.

It is vengeful and venomous in its spite, remorseless in its destruction on behalf of its Master in the black hole.  Only twenty thousand light years across but limitless in its trail it wreaks its outward peregrination of hate and havoc at the speed of light.

There is no defence, no avoidance.  Its targets never see its approach, it is sudden and complete death to anything in its path.

Fifteen billion years it has travelled across the universes.  Still tied to the black hole at its tail and still headstrong at its spear point of deadly intent.  It has no recognition of galaxies, only of heat.  Heat is food to be consumed, to grow, to continue in its quest for more heat, more sustenance.

Eventually it will run out of galaxies to devour and it will die in the far reaches of eternal emptiness but, for now, there is heat to savour, to spend in relentless pursuit of more and yet more.

In a corner of the Milky Way galaxy there is a small planet.  Blue and luxuriant it is home to the greatest variety and multitude of different living organisms in the Universe.

It is in the way.

There is, perhaps, a very small chance that it will be missed, that the jet of pure radiation will go past harmlessly skimming only the far edge of the galaxy.

Untold numbers of souls have already perished in both universes.  Never enough.  Gravity sees life as heat.

Heat and gravity are enemies; the war spreads itself out into the universes.  This is a place where there are no winners only innocent losers.

It is likely, very likely, there are only hours left.  Now is the time to unite.  Embrace friends; take the hands of your enemies.  Seek out your own God.

Pray.

Memories are Made of...

We have two forms of ultra-short term memory. They are:

ICONIC memory

and

ECHOIC memory.

Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it? Where do we go from here?

There are other memories that are ultra short term and they are associated with touch, smell and taste. The ‘smell’ memory is closely linked with recollection since the olfactory lobes that collect smell and the olfactory cortex that ‘recognise and store’ the information are very close – possibly only two or three nerve synapses apart.

Are you still awake?

Iconic memory lasts about half a second. It is this that allows us to see movements in a film, for example, as a flowing motion and not as a series of rapid snapshots – of which, more later.

Echoic memory lets us resolve a sentence that someone says to us and make sense of it. It lasts for around two seconds so it is longer lived than iconic memory.

Experiment:

Get someone close to you, geographically not personally, and tell them something, make it fairly long – something along the lines of, “I think that I should like to go to Majorca on holiday this year.” Put a space of about three seconds between each word. Then get them to repeat back what you said. It is slow but you may be surprised to find that they can remember very little of what you said.

This experiment will show that echoic memory is what allows you to comprehend a full sentence easily.

Going back to iconic memory for a moment. Many of you will have heard of 'Subliminal Messaging'. This is a method of passing information to a recipient without their knowledge.

Subliminal mesaging can be done aurally but the one that most of us have heard about is carried out visually.

During a film one frame is shown that has a word, or an image, on it. It might say 'thirst'. The plan is that everyone watching the film will now feel thirsty. Sadly, the effect is very limited. Those who are already thirsty will become more so but those who are not thirsty will not be swayed.

Other experiments have been carried out but with limited success.

 The jury, as they say, is still out. Your thoughts?

Then there’s short-term memory.

Read the paragraph above to your friend. Wait for about twenty seconds and then ask them to tell you what was in it. Once again, you will find that there is little recall – just an odd detail, or two.

Working memory is different again, that is using what is in your head to continue with defined functions.

Short-term memory can be aided by ‘chunking’ – putting numbers, for example, into small chunks of three or four digits instead of trying to remember whole numbers all at once.

Are we beginning to see how memory is fallible? Do we begin to see how unreliable witnesses are?

We believe, honestly, that what we recall is what we have seen or heard. The fact is that we lie. We do not want to and we do not intend to but the fact remains that we are often mistaken in our recollections.

Now add in psychotropic drugs.

Certain psychotropic drugs turn your brain into porridge. Solving simple problems becomes an arduous task because all thought processes slow down. You feel that every thought is pushing through that thick porridge in an attempt to connect with the next thought; sometimes it fails and the thought is forgotten before a connection is made.

Many psychotropic drugs endure in the body’s system.

LSD, is a prime example of a drug that can give you ‘flashbacks’ many years later. This will occur even if only one small dose is taken, it is not dependent upon quantity.

Some of the drugs that are taken for controlling people with schizophrenia also stay in the system for some time, not enough to control the mental aberration but enough to give side effects.

All of these type of drugs affect memory.

As does diet.

The propensity of those who take alcohol to forget things – sometimes conveniently, one supposes, is well known. These periods of forgetfulness will also occur with taking cannabis and its sundry by-products.

The people who take this will often deny it but it is another example of how the mind will ‘fill in’ gaps to present a whole picture.

Remember that everything you see, hear, touch, taste and smell exists only in your head. That is your world. Totally.

There is nothing else. Those things that you experience that appear to be external are merely the projection that your brain makes to assure you that you live among other people and objects. Yes, those people and objects exist.

Experiment:

If you are a male choose an attractive female and if you are female choose a desirable male for this.

Walk towards them and try to walk through them. You will fail because that person is really there and not just a figment of your imagination.

You may now explain to them that they were part of an experiment and you would be delighted to tell them all about it over coffe and cupcakes.

Nevertheless that person only existed, to you, inside your head. The person you bumped into was a projection by your mind that located that person in time and space in front of you.

If your ultra short term memory and short term memory lapse the event may have been transferred into long term memory. The duration of that is, potentially, unlimited.

If your mind has been affected by drugs – including alcohol, your recollection of the bumped person may be different to reality.

That reality, the one that exists only inside your head, is the only one that matters to you. If the person was, in actual fact, unattractive you will never know if you never meet that person again; in your mind they will be desirable and that is your truth.

Writers live in a different world. We have several realities that we transfer into our stories.

The characters that live in our heads live in our mental realities. The story that we write about them is just a narration of what they are doing with some description of their surroundings.

If we have several stories in our heads, as most of us do, then we are living in several realities. They all exist. They can all be projected around us in the same way as the world that the rest of the population ‘sees’ is projected. There are times when I have walked down an alien road and felt the gravel under my feet, I can smell the sap from alien trees and hear the birds whistling in the branches.

Sometimes coming back to ‘normality’ is a shock. Sometimes it is a little bit depressing and sometimes it is a relief.

Does this make writers different from other people? I have no idea. I have never been other people. None of us knows what goes on inside the heads of those people that are projected in front of us no matter how long we have known them.

Unless they write it down.