Faster than light?

Last week a group of scientist announced that they have just observed a neutrino travel fast than light.

Mouth wide open in astonishment.

Now you may say ‘so what’

You see the problem is that according to Einsteins Theory of Relativity, nothing which contains matter can travel fast than light. Now a neutrino have a very very very small amount of matter, it’s infentisamal. Making it imposable for it to travel fast than light. Let’s just say to move a particle of matter to the speed of light would take an impossible amount of energy.

Again you may say ‘so what, how can this effect me’

Well everything we know about physics is based on the theory of relativity. It gives us a well established stick to measure everything else against. (That’s if my understanding of it is correct and I’m no expert)
Needless to say if this is proven right it could change our understanding of the universe. Worst thing is it could take months probably years to get any confirmation. So don’t hold your breath.

I’m a science fiction geek and love this stuff. It’s like finding out that pitza can make you lose Weight.

What we have to remind ourselves is that there are discovers made every day that blow previous theory’s out the water only to be disproven later.

Wouldn’t it be cool though to find out everything we thought, was wrong.

I like change and changing the world is cool.

Emotions part five ‘Hate’

I wonder what we mean when we say hate. I think most people can see a person in there minds eye if I ask.

‘who do you hate?’

I have been trying to write this post for months, it seems that I just cannot get a handle on hate. It could be me, maybe I just don’t have the ability to hate.

Is it hate that we feel? or is it another emotion that we are just confusing as hate. Like jealousy or envy.
Hate is what I would call a prime emotion like a prime colour. It’s one of the big ones, we use this in a combination with others to make our mood or feeling at any one time. It wouldn’t suprise me to find that there are specific parts of the brain that directly involves it’s self to making us feel hate. There has been many times in my life when I have felt hateful towards someone or something; it is normally short lived and happened when I was a much younger person.

In the wisdom that comes with thirty eight years (if any) I seem to have mellowed, It takes a lot more to rattle my cage. Maybe having children has taught me to control this destructive emotion.

Our feelings have developed over many thousands of years. We as a species used to use such things as tools. Only now we live so different to our recent ancestors that we can get confused to which emotion we should be using.
It’s not human to hang on to any situation after the outcome is obsolete. So if you feel hate for someone because they have done you wrong then that’s fine but as soon as your hate becomes self destructive then it’s time to let go. Move on and make the best of what’s left. Whether it be love, money or a family feud. Life is to short and to preoccupy our life’s with such futile endeavours if wasteful to say the least. In the end hate is powered by the situation that gave it life. What we have to do is rationalise it as quick as possible to limit the damage it will cause, because if left it will cause damage.

This is when the empathy comes in; to see the situation from the other point of view will give you prospective and know doubt show you how small it was in the first place. In the end maybe it’s our ability to forgive and empathise with others that makes the difference. Writing makes me empathise with others, after all if I could not empathise I would only write a one sided story. I’m only able to give characters there own life by taking that life from everyone round me. I little bit of everyone I know will be in all my story’s

My oldest brother has some great advice, that is “do to others, only what you would have done to yourself’ (Im sure thats out of a very famous book, involved a man who’s name began with a “J” I think)

So hate is useless and a waste of hormones.

Buddha said “Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love” Be it karma or some faith from a corner of the world or a spiritual intervention, but I do believe that we get what we give.

What I tell my two boys when they blur the line between right and wrong is that ‘bad people get bad things and good people get good things’

So give nice and receive nice in return.

To Lie?

I was going to call this post emotions number four but lies are not really an emotion, although they do evoke an array of emotion.

First  I should define between a damaging lie and a white lie. I believe a white lie is when your partner says they had one biscuit when they really had two. A damaging lie is self explaining, they cause damage. The worst kind of lie is when the lie its self prevents you from fulfilling a promise or stops you from supporting the victim of the lie.

If you lie to someone close to you, the kind of person you would not normally betray. The disappointment you will cause that person will do a number of things to you (the lie giver). Firstly the guilt will make you angry at yourself which you will pass on. Also you would begin to avoid the victim of your lie (the one lied to), this in its self could cause more damage.

Then there is the trust lost, all lies do make themselves known eventually.

Someone once said if you cut your arm you will heal. If you keep cutting the arm eventually it will fall off. A lie is like a cut you only get to do it a few times. Then it will end.

As for the victim lies only hurt. There will never be a good one.

If I sound like a preacher I apologise, I don’t lie.

DO NOT LIE. EVER. EVER. 🙂

Emotions part 3

I try to regret as little as possible.

I believe regret leads to only dark and hurtful thoughts. I suppose that if you look at any disision (it’s disision that make regrets) it’s to not make it a flippant one. Take time and make sure you have covered all aspects.

Looked at all the relevant paths and discarding the weak ones. What you are left with is the few true remaining paths. This for me limits the potential for regret.
It’s not foolproof, I have some regret to disision I have made but I am happy that at the time they seemed right. Hindsight is a wonderful tool only for a time traveler. Us simple folk will just have to make the best we can with what we have.

Emotions

Recent events in my life have left me thinking a lot about emotion. On the 10th of may 2011 my father passed away and like every one who has ever lost a parent, it kind of hits you hard, or maybe I should say harder than you think it will.

He had been ill for many years, I thought I had prepared myself for the eventual outcome. The one thing I could not prepare for is how my emotions were going to act.

Because I write it seemed only right that I write something. The first night after his death I found myself writing about me and my father, mainly about him and the kind of man he was, the thing is that its all very personal and not suitable for a blog post. This left me with a dilemma. Do I follow the rule of;

“you must always write the truth no mater how painful”

or do I hold on to the personal info and find the middle ground. I just kept on writing what came, after two days I stopped to check what I had written, I noticed a pattern. That is I had been moving from who my dad had been to how I felt about him. His Stories and Poem’s have always effected me, eventually making me write stories for myself. As you can see its happening now I’m beginning to get personal. If unchecked I will probably pour out all over this macbook air.

I am a father, I have two boys. I also had a father of my own as you will have and every person who has ever lived will have.
My roll as the father of my children is quite traditional. I believe I should be a provider and protector to my family. Of course this also includes my wife, (she if really wonderful) as a father I’m to sacrifice my wants for the good of the family. This was my interpretation of the things passed down to me from my father.

My father passing away has lead to me reflecting back on my life. Being that I have known him all my life It stands that eventually I would reach my childhood. This was in the seventies as I was born in 1972. Things were different then. For example no Internet, no video films, never mind cable tv. There were only three tv channels and definitely no xbox or play station three, Just mum and dad and marbles.

I salute parents everywhere we are a result of them and our children will be a result of us.

Rest In Peace DAD, Love you always.

Photo of Keith glenn

Odyssey, the Fantasy Writing Workshop

Odyssey, the Fantasy Writing Workshop.

ODYSSEY - The Fantasy Writing Workshop

I came across this web site a few weeks ago, I have found it very helpful. Especially the pod casts, download them and get some very valuable advice from some of the best authors around. The podcast include talks from Publishers, Agents, and Authors.

If you find the site helpful let me know.

Evolution or intelligent design, which?

Evolution or intelligent design which? 
As I approach my thirty-ninth year, my mind is constantly drawn towards the hereafter or the afterlife. I am approaching the middle of my life this leaves me or gives me a question.
Should I be thinking of the end of my life only half way through? I think not.
But I also think it is probably a common thing, as we approach half way through our lives and we start to think we may have less years ahead than what are behind us and we feel that we may have not achieved anything we really wanted to do. Then we reach this midlife and it dawns that we have less time in front, have we done what we wanted to do, then it dawns, have we done what we wanted to do with the time we have had? So this brings the question will I have another chance? Will I get another go? Will it be possible for me to do this again and maybe achieve the goals that I wanted to achieve in this life?
Thus Evolution verse Intelligent Design. Evolution tells us that we evolved over millions of years, ranging from primates, marsupials, mammals of all kinds, basically all starting from a point in time about 4.54 billion years ago where the conditions for the creation of this planet we fondly call Earth. Life started around 4 billion years ago, it is said that because of the many hits by asteroids that the process was started over and over again but 4 billion is the accepted figure.  There is two possible starts to this one from outer space and the other from right here on planet Earth nevertheless both make similar mechanisms for life to begin. Now all this is proven to a degree, it has evidence, it has highly educated people saying that this is the way it all started.
Where Intelligent Design can be tracked back just a few thousand years, I know people who are very much involved in Intelligent Design wether they believe it or not. In my opinion all aspects of anything to do with the supernatural wether it is spiritualism, religion or any of the fringes or fractions of faith. They all involve from some form of Intelligent Design. They all have some degree of belief that there is some higher power at work, it could be a god or just an unseen force at work. By implication this means some sort of Intelligence’s having a hand in the creation of things as we know it. Rather than just random events evolving, learning and evolving.
This led me to a year of research, I spent many months looking into spiritualism as people i know are heavily involved. I spent my time going to meetings and churches seeing people who are regarded as an authority in the supernatural, such as ghosts and spirit. As far as the meeting I attended, well I did have some experiences that would be classified as being supernatural. I have sat in a room with many people in a circle, I had a feeling you would get when coming in to land at an airport. That pressure on your face and eyes. Well, its like that, the whole room was like that. I cannot explain were this pressure came from, was it there from spiritualism? Or just there minds transmitting like telekinesis. There was about ten to twelve people in that room and every one of them came with the experience of what they believed, after meditation they were telling me things about people that were in the room and about myself. This was including dead people that were surrounding us.
I have tried my hardest to think from this point of view and I have a problem that there is no evidence its pure speculation. Even the things that have happened even the images I saw in my meditation, I saw things that were so provocative that, I wanted to make me believe! But this again don’t prove anything. Its purely me thinking, I can think of me flying through the sky or being in outer space it will not make it real. It just means its me thinking, it’s my imagination. It’s part of me making these things up. and this is the fundamental problem with Intelligent Design there is no proof. In the previous paragraph I list proofs but thats just the tip of what I can find out. I just don’t have the time to go through it all. People of faith say there is proof they say that Intelligent Design is all around us, that how could things just be random? How could organs, complicated organ develop like the eye, how could something so complicated as the eye not be of design. The brain, how could something so durable like the heart be not of design. In-fact what was before the heart or brain? How did creatures live with out them. The answer is all around us now. There are creatures in our seas that have eyes far less developed than humans many creatures have small brains and still manage a successful existence.
 Through these creatures we can map our selves all the way back to the beginning. Professor Richard Dawkins says in his book The Selfish Gene, that we are just a vessel for the gene and it is the gene that keeps itself moving through evolution. We are more like a by product, if it could find a more efficient way then we would soon be no more, replaced by a more efficient carrier.
After all said and done I’m afraid it leaves me where I started as a spectator of life of somebody that will not ever know what the answer is. I am, as you may guess from the writing swing towards the evolutionary path, I’m happy to be here to. I do believe that the evidence is stacked way against the Intelligent Design theory. There is no evidence that can be proved to support Intelligent Design no mater how far you look back. I could almost write a book on this subject itself as I feel quite strong about it. I just feel that it must come down to evidence and that evidence must be logical to bring about a logical outcome. Up to this day the evidence is not in favour of Intelligent Design it is in favour of Evolution.
A lot of Intelligent Design believers don’t believe they are on the side of Intelligent Design, they kind of skip between the two and this bothers me because some people believe in a higher power that supports them and helps them though life, while at the same time believing in Evolution. Only picking elements that suits them, this is a contradiction in belief full stop, its wrong in my opinion. They should make a dissuasion on were there going to stand. If you believe in Evolution then by implication you cannot believe in any part of Intelligent Design. Evolution is what it is, it cannot be turned it to a bit of the other it has to be that, purely fact based on the evidence that we hold to date. Other wise it isn’t Evolution. People do this probable for there own reasons maybe they feel a need it to support there life or more probable support with there death and the ever after. I am curious myself I cannot deny that I don’t like the idea of death. I have noticed that people who have lost someone close to them. Do seem to be more towards the atheist then the religions route. I think that because they have a vested interest in communicating with the dead and when there is no reply then then it deflates the argument. It always seems to be a distant relative that is contacted and not any one that can be verified. I suppose I should put my foot on one side of the fence its only fair after all the dispersions I’m making. At this point in my life what faith do I follow? Well I’m purely Evolutionist and I’m most definitely an Atheist in the simple sense of the word that I believe that there is no higher power. I believe that my life is my life and its up to me to make the best of that life. I should not be concentrating on the end of it right now being that I’m in the middle, I should be concentrating on my life and this is what I shall do from now on. Religion, spiritualism or what ever you want to go into, all seem to be a focus on the end of life. People all seem to be fixated with the hereafter and that in its self kind of means that if you live your life for your death then its kind of a waist of life, your not evolving as you should.
Please remember that this is all my personal opinion.
Please leave a comment I would like your opinion on any thing.