The End Times

The world still hasn’t ended yet. I hope it ends before the expiry date on my popcorn.

As I’ve often said, I have no religion of any kind, not even atheism. I have absolutely no interest in persuading anyone to my view of the afterlife, this life, past lives… or anything else.

I have, however, always been interested in religion. Not in whether it’s true or not, nor in whether I should consider joining up. No, my interest is in where it comes from, and why so many people fervently believe something that cannot be proven because there is no mechanism for testing it.

How would science go about testing God? Omnipotent, omnipresent – so you can’t have a ‘definite no-God’ control area. Where is your null hypothesis? That everything arose by pure chance? Well, is that a null hypothesis or an opposing theory? And how do you go about testing whether anything in biology, geology, elsewhere did not arise by chance when the alternative is not visible, tangible or measurable? There is nothing to test.

Try testing prayer. Let’s say you get an effect. Does that prove God, or does it prove Jung’s ‘collective consciousness’ at work? Did the healing come from a God or directly from the people praying?

If someone performed a verifiable miracle – did God do it, or did that person exhibit some unusual paranormal ability? There is no way to prove that God exists. You either believe or you don’t. I don’t.

I know, people say I should believe as an insurance against being wrong. If I said I believed I’d be lying. I’d be faking it, as so many already do, to avoid being ostracised or worse by the religious community they live in. If there is a God, he’s likely to be much more pissed at me for faking it than for being honest about not believing. And God would know I was faking it. Faking it would mean lying to myself, to everyone else, and, ultimately, to any God who might be watching. As insurance policies go, it’s a dud.

All religions, including the new Church of Climatology, have a doomsday scenario. The end of the world. Do as we say, live as we tell you, or you will be damned on Judgement Day. Yes, Climatology is a religion. It fits all the criteria.

Climatology has seized on the Christian Armageddon version, in which the world is utterly destroyed forever and all humans are dead. The Christian one is preferable in that at least some survive and get taken up to Heaven. The Climatologist’s Green God just kills everyone.

The big question is – when? When does this all happen? The Jehovah’s Witnesses once set a date of about 1919 (my memory could be a couple of years off) and the world didn’t end. Although the First World War brought it to an end for millions of people so maybe they weren’t entirely off the scoreboard with that one.

There have been quite a few dates that have been set for Armageddon and all have passed uneventfully. God won’t give a date, as Death himself once explained.

So it’s all guesswork. Anyway, not all religions have such finality to the end days although pretty much all of them calculate those end days as being very close. For some, and there is a consistency between several of their legends, the end is not an ‘end’, but a change. A big change, a not particularly comfortable change, a change few will survive, but not the utter destruction of the planet.

The survivors will not have pink hair and arms like pipe cleaners. It’s that sort of change.

I have for some time been interested in the ‘yuga’ cycles of ancient India. Now, I know it is fashinonable to think of India as being under British subjugation as if it didn’t exist before Queen Victoria’s time, but there has been a quiet civilisation there for a very long time. They do not seem to have been an expansionist civilisation, they aren’t recorded as being like the Greeks and Romans and many others who were so bored with their own countries they felt the need to invade someone else’s. India has been invaded many times throughout history but they showed no interest in invading anyone else.

There is an interesting, if long, article by someone who has studied the matter in detail. The full yuga is 12000 years and there are four sections to it. Well really it’s 24000 years because there is a decline then a rising of humanity through the cycles. We are currently in Kali Yuga, the very bottom of the cycle, a time of barbarity and chaos. It’s nearly over.

Each of the yuga sections is 2700 years with a 300 year transition period (which is what Tessie Maybe will sign us up to over Brexit if the daft tart has her way). Here is the timeline he has calculated:

So we are leaving Kali Yuga and moving into the transition period into a new and better period, if this is correct. However, the transition period is always nasty.

Basically, natural disasters and the collapse of civilisations. Well, we are about to enter a Grand Solar Minimum which will make a mockery of all those ‘climate change’ energy bollocks, and civilisation falling apart? Look around, it’s happening.

Do I believe this? I believe nothing. I look at data and try to make sense of it. I do, however, believe that a lot of human knowledge of the past has been lost. How and why thjat happened I don’t know.

I have watched a lot of YouTube videos about pyramids. Not just the ones in Egypt. Most of those videos say ‘humans could not have done this, it must be aliens’ because we would struggle to build with that level of precision now.

But what if we could in the past? It is true that the Egyptians with their meticulous record-keeping left no clue as to how they built the pyramids. Maybe they didn’t build them. Maybe they found and adopted them. There was a plausible theory that the Sphinx originally had a lion’s head that was re-carved to a pharoah’s head and the proportions bear this out.

The Greek civilisational collapse mentioned in the graphic above was so bad they had to re-learn how to write. It wasn’t just the Greeks, it was global. Nobody would remember who built the pyramids and many other complex structures and nobody would remember how they were built.

I have to consider this as possible. It’s certainly, in my view, preferable to ancient aliens who came here, built huge stuff and then just pissed off home. It seems more plausible that humanity in the past developed skills that were subsequently lost through a global catastrophe that set us back to the stone age. I mean, if a big solar flare hit the planet tomorrow, what would happen to the infrastructure we have built now? How would future archaeologists interpret a fossilised iPhone?

Do I need religion for this? No, I just need an accurate historical record and if the human race is blasted back to living in caves and going ‘ook-ook’ every 3000 years, any historical record beyond that is going to be suspect.

But you know, when you look at the world around us now, and you match it to these old text cycles, it’s hard not to think ‘here we go again’.

If there is a God, it seems he does have a reset button for the planet after all.

24 thoughts on “The End Times

  1. I think people believe through personal experience of something greater than themselves. Such experience cannot be proved. It can happen through religion or not. The thing that blocks such experiences is doubt and the grip that science has over our minds nowadays. To me, there is no such thing as paranormal, only states of consciousness unexplored. I solved the problem for myself by realising that there is a different reality for every creature on earth. So I believe everything;
    and nothing, except my own realty.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I’ve experienced enough to be convinced there is something after death – though it might not be eternal. I have seen nothing to suggest anyone is in charge though, it all seems pretty random. I can’t produce hard evidence unless I learn how to conjure a spirit and make it do my bidding and that sort of thing tends to get into some dark territory. So I’m convinced but there’s no way to prove it to anyone else.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. In terms of the paranormal, at least, there is some evidence that there is something going on in places, although the fluffy explanations in the past and now are still garbage. As a barrister I know put it, there is actually more evidence for the poltergeist phenomenon being real and tangible than there was evidence to convict Rolf Harris of paedophillia. Poltergeist phenomena throughout the ages has consistent factors all the way through; a conflict between a teenage female and a middle-aged one being one such factor. Poltergeist phenomena seem to start off slowly, rise to a crescendo over time, then fade away; what the humans involved do in the mean time seems not to be very relevant.

    There is also some sort of weird stuff going on with what a friend of mine, one Jonathan Downes, calls cryptozoology. This is the study of unusual, out-of-place, possibly extinct or otherwise unusual animals. Most of these cryptids can be fairly easily explained away as misperceptions or escaped pets of simply freaks of nature. For example, two examples of the Scottish Kellas cat have been shot (and the skins and skulls preserved) and have proven to be domestic cat / wildcat hybrids. Something over a century ago an escaped lynx was shot in Cornwall; its stuffed remains are still in a museum.

    For another example, take the classic sighting of the Loch Ness monster. This is a low hump in the water with what appears to be a long neck with a ridiculously tiny head on the end. Commonly this is claimed to be a relic plesiosaur, despite very good evidence that plesiosaurs of this sort went completely extinct well before the K/T Boundary event that killed off most dinosaurs (the few survivors today hand around in trees, going “tweet, tweet”).

    The bulk of these sightings occurred during a period when a wealthy circus owner was offering a reward for information leading to the capture of the Loch Ness Monster. He was doing the old trick of associating his name with that of something more famous, to boost his appeal. Of course, if one does this with the Loch Ness Monster, it is quite nice if a few sightings occur. It is also best not to leave these sorts of things to chance, and way back then if you didn’t have elephants in your circus, it wasn’t a proper circus. The classic picture of the Loch Ness Monster is of a female Indian elephant swimming in Loch Ness (with a backdrop of very well bribed locals sniggering in the bushes).

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    • One of my alter egos is working on another book about ‘ghosthunting’. There are many contradictions. Can hauntings, Heaven/Hell, and reincarnation all be real? Surely if we reincarnate into an expanding population there won’t be enough souls for all the new bodies, so there won’t be any ghosts and there won’t be anyone in Heaven or Hell. There would also be soulless people… well, okay, looking around I can well believe that part.

      If we are all judged and are consigned to Heaven or Hell, there won’t be any reincarnation and again, no ghosts. So if there are ghosts, what went wrong? It’s a mess, which is why I cannot believe there is a higher power running the show.

      Anyway, that’s beside the point. Poltergeists could be some psychic projection of an angsty teen, or maybe the angsty teen allows some other spirit to take power from them. Science doesn’t like either explanation so just puts poltergeist phenomena in the ‘nutcase’ box.

      Cryptozoology, well, there are a hell of a lot of places on this planet humans don’t use, don’t visit and don’t care about. Huge tracts of land where nobody goes. A few years back, a new species of ape was discovered in the Congo. This isn’t like finding a new type of moth or mosquito. Apes are big, and the entire species went unnoticed until recently. In the defence of science, there weren’t very many of the species, but even so…

      We’re still discovering new species and we have large areas we never visit. So there are more species waiting to be discovered. Maybe some of them have been glimpsed and turned into folklore.

      The Loch Ness Monster though… I doubt it. There are daily overpriced boat trips on Loch Ness and the banks are, albeit sparsely, populated. I’ve been there, and CStM paddled in it. Even using her as bait I saw nothing. A plesiosaur can’t possibly live forever, there would have to be a family of them, so at least one dead one should have washed up by now.

      The giant squid was derided by science until one washed up on a beach in the 1980s. Loch Ness is a hell of a lot smaller than the ocean, and nothing has washed up there so far.

      Unless, of course, the pterodactyls eat them before anyone finds them 😉

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  3. There is no God and there is evidence, albeit hazy, to support this.

    Years ago during the Iraqi War both Bush and Blair had heart issues and went in for treatment. Millions over the planet prayed that they would snuff it and they came out with an all clear, both of them.

    Clearly No God. Ergo sumting. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  4. There is much I like here. (In no particular order)

    “Now, I know it is fashinonable to think of India as being under British subjugation as if it didn’t exist before Queen Victoria’s time, but there has been a quiet civilisation there for a very long time.”

    Yeah. Not unlike the answer to the express fear that China may get cocky, having recently achieved ‘greatness.’ The answer is that China has always considered itself great, but that greatness was interrupted for 100 years by Western intervention.

    “But what if we could in the past?” re building pyramids. Yes! How many think to challenge the evolutionist paradigm that we are ever improving? Maybe we are getting dumber.

    JWs and 1919. I have likened that period to when you miss the nail with the hammer & in frustration take several additional swings, again missing each time.

    Oh, and predicting the end of the world? Piece of cake. Here’s how you do it:

    https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2011/05/how-to-predict-the-end-of-the-world.html

    Liked by 1 person

    • There is plenty to suggest the world is getting dumber. Every time I look in on Twitter I see more evidence of it.

      The thing about natural selection and ‘survival of the fittest’ is that the fittest are not always the muscle-bound healthy ones. The ‘fittest’ means the ones best suited to their environment.

      Our environment has gone soft. There are people who refuse to believe that, at close to 60, I still chop firewood with a long axe. ‘Why don’t you get an electric machine to do it or better, just turn on the central heating?’ Well, my way doesn’t cost me anything and it stops me getting too fat. And, heck, I like it.

      I grew up with frost on the inside of windows and a house that was freezing until my father got the fire going. Before double glazing, before insulation – even before the invention of the cassette player! The world has changed so fast that I have read about someone who found a 3.5 inch floppy disk and thought someone 3D-printed the ‘save’ icon. I still have a few 8 inch disks around here somewhere and might even have the cassettes I saved my ZX-81 programs on – in my twenties.

      I have worked with a young guy who could not tell time on an analogue clock. I have Imperial-units micrometers that I bought at ridiculously low prices because nobody can use them now.

      So, at my age, on no medication, still able to move 3-foot by 2-foot patio slabs around, I am not the fittest for this new environment. I don’t understand online gaming and can barely grasp online banking. I have a fancy phone but use almost none of its capabilities (which is why I have a cheap Android one). I can’t be bothered with finding offence over trivia, which is the new thing that’s all the rage. I am no longer suited to this world, the idiots and the ‘woke’ weak will inherit it.

      A soft environment means that the ‘fittest’, ie those most suited to that environment, are the soft and the weak. Well good luck to them.

      When the environment turns hard again, and it will, humanity will become extinct. When I look at what it has become I can only think ‘Good riddance’.

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  5. “I do, however, believe that a lot of human knowledge of the past has been lost.”

    I agree with you and I think it’s very important because we aren’t told the truth about the past, which is affecting how we live in the present and things seem to be going backwards as we ‘progress’ into the future, which is fine scientifically (e.g. entropy), but it is also affecting human societies, although scripture does tell us that the whole of creation is decaying. It is nearly 50 years since Concorde’s maiden flight, yet civilians can no longer fly supersonic from London to New York or anywhere else as far as I’m aware. Again, 50 years ago, “we” landed on the moon, allegedly, but some voices in NASA claim they no longer have the technology to go back and anyway, somebody wiped or destroyed all the tapes of data from the flights.

    Instead, NASA has been spending billions on looking for ET, even though there is zero evidence for them. I think this is a betrayal, as science and discovery have been sacrificed to bankroll the philosophical position that aliens exist and we must find them. Philosophers don’t need billions of dollars, they just need coffee and cigarettes – and a pointy beard might help. So, why hasn’t NASA spent the money building bases on the moon and other big round rocks out there? The ‘space race’ today seems to be between celebs with a few bob like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, as if holidays in low earth orbit using WWII technology is something to get excited about.

    In conversing with evolutionists online, there seems to be quite a number who believe that aliens seeded life on Earth, because nobody can come up with a reasonable process by which the mythical first self-replicating molecule came into being by normal chemical processes. They rule out the Deity as being a ‘sky pixie’ but they’ll believe instead in little green hombres. And they like to believe the messages these entities are purported to deliver, which usually have strong religious overtones, which furthers the idea that ‘aliens’ are spiritual entities and probably bad ones.

    After the great advances of the 16th and 17th centuries, the rot started setting in as far back as the so-called Enlightenment, when clever dicks thought they could dispense with the thinking of the previous two centuries of scientific enquiry by, what seems to me, to have been almost exclusively conducted by Bible-believers, and that very much includes Galileo.

    The 18th C saw tentative steps into new earth theories, such as Hutton’s uniformitarianism (the present is the key to the past), which damaged geology and thus many other areas of science for 200 years. The Missoula Floods have reignited the idea of catastrophism among some secular geologists, but not enough to admit to the global Flood, even though the evidence is supreme (e.g. hard quartzite boulders, rounded and covered in percussion marks due to turbulent water flow, found on the tops of mountain ranges which they have planed flat). They’ll admit that there was once a global flood on Mars, but that doesn’t help validate scripture, so that’s OK. Obviously, a global flood on a planet 70% covered in water is just too ridiculous in comparison!

    Anyway, Hutton and Lyell’s long ages made it possible for Darwin to invent his common ancestor, extrapolated from the minor changes within existing species he observed in the plants and animals he studied. This ‘theory’ of evolution has caused massive damage to people and to science, e.g. social Darwinism, the 98% ‘junk DNA’ myth and the very wrong idea that humans had dozens of vestigial organs – a natural hypothesis if evolution from a common ancestor had been true, but that most or all of these organs have now been shown to have a function, the predictions from creationists were the correct ones.

    Now, of course, ‘scientists’ have generally become more irrational than ever, as they abuse science to give those in power the ‘facts’ they pay for in order to control everything we do.

    History, too, had to be cleansed of anything which validated the Deity and so British history tends to ‘start’ with the first attempted Roman invasion. This way, the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Nennius and the like can be laughed to scorn, as can the manuscripts from various pre-Christianised peoples of Europe whose lineages are shown to go back to Noah’s son Japheth.

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    • I’m sure NASA landed on the moon, and also sure there was a fake film made. It was the Cold War so they had a backup plan in case the ship failed. They did this with less computing power than the average phone so they could do it again if they had a mind to. The Chinese just did it, on the far side of the moon, so NASA has fallen way behind.

      It’s not computing power stopping them, it’s the decline and fall of the West. We’re now made up of bearded weepy men who think they are feminists and women who think any man capable of lifting anything heavier than a Starbucks latte is showing ‘toxic masculinity’. China, and other places, think this is silly and are having no part of it.

      The West is falling apart, and going through exactly what the Bible and most other religions describe. Every day I look in on Twitter and move the ‘lunacy’ needle a bit further towards 100%. The world is cracking up. Nothing can stop it now.

      It’s not just the West. South America is descending into war, the USA is run by tantrum-riddled toddlers on both sides, Canada is ruled by the very epitome of ‘girlie man’ and Africa is determined to move north into countries where their children will die of rickets because they can’t make enough vitamin D in our paltry sunlight. Pakistan and India are rich countries full of poverty and hate and Islam, particularly, is so riven that they kill more of each other than they do of anyone outside the religion.

      The gates of Hell are open and the Riders are coming out.

      I don’t, personally, believe it is the end of the planet. But I do think there will be a massive and catastrophic reduction in the numbers of humans in the next century or so. Humanity has gone soft and stupid and we let it happen. It’s too late now to change it, we just have to wait for the event that wipes out the weak.

      I don’t think it will take very much, you know.

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      • I have seen good evidence both for and against the moon landings, so I’m sitting on the fence on this one, which is quite uncharacteristic for me.

        This is the quote I was thinking of from astronaut Don Pettit, “I’d go to the moon in a nanosecond. The problem is we don’t have the technology to do that anymore. We used to but we destroyed that technology and it’s a painful process to build it back again.”

        Fair enough, they don’t have any spare Saturn V rockets to send up more Apollo missions (notice how they like to name this stuff after pagan gods, like the planets and moons), but I would have thought that technology would have advanced sufficiently to build more efficient modes of transport.

        The previous 50 years saw the introduction of the jet engine, nuclear bombs and power, television, satellites, etc. yet since the 60s, what have we had, other than, as you say, much better computers? (I still say vinyl is superior to CDs!)

        “Every day I look in on Twitter…”

        I’m not a doctor, but I advise against such reckless behaviour. In his book, “Thought Prison,” Bruce Charlton advises readers not to bother debating with the sincerely politically correct as it’s a complete waste of time.

        He believes the West is doomed too and that it was doomed from the start – that PC was bound to happen eventually. I disagree, as there seems to be an elite foisting this nonsense on us. It’s not the ordinary people calling for new laws and taxes, it’s the government-funded universities and astroturfing charities and their like-minded friends in the media. Of course, the masses end up endorsing it either through propaganda or fear of sanctions (legal action, loss of employment, etc.).

        It’s not a religious book per se, but Charlton’s advice is to avoid PC to help save your soul.

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        • I don’t think he meant technology, so much as equipment. Having shut it down and scrapped the rockets (presumably in favour of the space shuttle) it would cost an enormous amount to put it all back.

          I still have an awful lot of vinyl. Also still have cassette tapes and VHS… well neither of those existed when I was a child. It’s hard to throw them out now. I know the current trend it to have it all online but I prefer to have the solid object, that can’t be remotely edited for PC sanitisation purposes.

          I don’t debate with the politically correct. It’s pointless arguing with someone who has already decided on the answer. Mostly I put up a piss-taking image and scarper 😉

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          • Yes, but you’d think that in the past half century there would have been a huge increase in technology. When you look at every half century back from 1969 there were enormous advances every time. They shouldn’t need to rebuild old technology any more than a company would try to sell us cassette tapes again. Wasn’t the space shuttle supposed to be part of a wider programme to boost astronauts further afield?

            When the ‘news’ used to show us the latest shuttle taking off, I would think, “So what?” I’ve seen a space shuttle and that was exciting. Back in the early 80s one was atop a 747 and flew low right overhead. I’ve no idea why it was in Glasgow.

            Anyway, I have a lot of vinyl, but I’ve not played them for years due to needing a new needle for my gramophone. Every one of my VHS tapes seems to be unplayable now due to some kind of dry rot on the tapes. Living in old, damp houses must’ve been the cause.

            Like you, I prefer the solid object. I should try to get a new stylus, as they say these days. Actually, I saw a graph of music sales for recent years and vinyl sales have been increasing year-on-year. It’s a pain when you have to move house, though: several boxes of LPs and singles (a few 78s even – perhaps NASA could rekindle these to store their data), two boxes of VHS tapes (can probably be thrown out now – painful), tons of DVDs and CDs and loads of cassette tapes, which haven’t succumbed to the disintegration, so again, the older stuff has lasted longer.

            My kettle must be 50 years old. A friend found it for me at a car boot sale or charity shop or somewhere as he knew I couldn’t find an all-steel kettle that didn’t have plastic bits in it to work the water level indicator thingy. It’s so old it doesn’t have an on/off switch, but fortunately, if I forget about it and it boils (almost) dry, a metal prong violently shoots out the flex, otherwise I would probably have had a kitchen full of kettle shrapnel.

            I should do something useful now and stop waffling…

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            • VHS tapes that have developed mould must be not used!
              They will clog the heads, the gaps in them thinner than a human hair.
              Save the labels maybe to remind you, even put the boxes on Freecycle.

              But toss, destroy the tapes. You can find them on DVD or internet.

              You should get a new stylus/needle for your cartridge, identify, look up.
              They only last about 500 hrs, used to think 1000.
              Maybe even a better cartridge?
              Then you need to know how to set it in the headshell.

              https://www.vinylengine.com/tools.shtml

              Join,
              You might find a manual for your turntable.
              In the Library.

              I also have several hundred LP’s, the ones bought new lovingly kept, lots of ECM jazz and new classical, other classical, other modern.
              Others second hand, some really great, some need cleaning before I’ll play them on an expensive stylus!

              Many play extremely quietly without ticks or pops, I clean the stylus and the LP.
              I want to build both a DIY vacuum record cleaner and the newer idea of an ultrasonic fluid tank record cleaner.

              As for cassettes, I have a Sony TC-RX80ES in use, an even better 3-head Sony ES deck that I’m restoring/cleaning, and in the 90’s went through periods of buying chrome and metal tapes as well as good normal, valuable now.

              There was a time when (still without a PC) I borrowed CDs from the library, recorded to tape so I could hear them again after the loan period.

              On quality metal tape, I could with guests witnessing, put one into the deck, walk away, knowing there’ll be a few seconds until it starts, they’re thinking OK it’s tape, we’re probably going to hear hiss, sigh;- but no:- dead silence even at loud volume, and then perhaps the startling intro Scream! to John Zorn’s Spillane:

              An imagined film noir soundtrack, the band could spin on a dime…
              Much lovely even ‘religious’ music later, as well as other genres.

              I also bought lots of VHS blank tapes, better quality ones – my VHS decks were are hifi stereo, NICAM stereo reception at the time, better than FM radio, I recorded some CD’s from the library before I had a PC.

              I had an ancient RTR video portapack deck & tethered camera that I could feed out the video from even without the tape running, to my VHS deck, so I’d set it vertical on an old converted microphone stand, record a track with a cut piece of transparent plastic highlighting it on the cover, pause, move it down, start next.

              That was the whole trouble with linear mechanisms like cassette & VHS.
              Although both actually did develop some fast seeking and index facilities.

              To compare with the sophisticated and well thought out ergonomics of later CD players, my about the same time Sony CDP-308ESD early 90’s has individual track buttons for up to 20 individually selectable tracks, lots else.

              Anyway, it’ll take me ages to sort through which videos to keep, and meanwhile researching on how to best capture to PC, the really valuable ones.

              A technical subject in itself., more learning and education involved.

              Thankfully there’s lots of video101 on the interweb …

              Sorry about the probably inevitably truncated formatting in this nested comment!

              Some slight observations from afar.

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              • Thanks for that. You were obviously more clued up than I ever was. I did try to play a VHS tape a few weeks ago – not only wouldn’t it play, but the video recorder won’t let me have the tape back: spoil sport. I had some video of friends from yonks ago, so it’s really these few that I wanted to try to salvage. Other people might well still have copies.

                I used to do my own b/w photo developing (from about 13/14 years old) and I wrote a programme for a simple computer game for the ZX Spectrum, so I used to be a bit technically-minded. I think college might have put me off. I lasted one term of a 4-year degree course in electrical engineering and I hated it – maths, physics, technical drawing – I thought I was going to be straight in building rockets and TVs. Actually, I bought a decent Super 8 cine camera when I was 16 (that’s 39 years ago) and I still have the films in good condition. Unfortunately, the projector bulb has gone. It was so expensive though. A 50ft film (lasts about 2 1/2 mins at 24 fps) cost about six pounds incl. processing (if memory serves), which was about 8 hours wages at the time.

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  6. The problem I have is the very selective reading of these various “ancient wisdoms”, yes there probably was a notable flood, stories of Noah exist in many cultures. Don’t forget, in the midst of these periods of doom, we got things like Stonehenge and all the other henges, with little clue to who built them, wasn’t the Celts, wasn’t the Beaker people, but they are found all over Europe, as are ancient ruins, including pyramids in the East. The Chinese had a marvellous civilization, going back, with records such as Shang oracle bones, to about 3500 BC, the Greeks were doing fine until they suffered from a drying climate, so they no longer had two and sometimes three harvests in a year, the Minoan civilization got clobbered by a tidal wave caused by the eruption of Santorini, Troy existed, all these things despite the Indians going “right, our book says the world turns to shit next Tuesday” Read some other works and you see how they had jet aircraft the Vimanas, and atom bombs, funny how they didn’t rule the world or keep any of this stuff isn’t it! Both China and India had a similar problem, they stopped thinking of a martial people as a good thing, result, both suffered from incursions by foreign armies, Alexander, the Mongols, both from islam which continues today. There are so many civilisations we know little about due to conquest by more virile barbarians, and I would include Cortes as one of those. The Romans were barbaric next to the Greeks and the Carthaginians, both of those were beasts next to the Egyptians of say Rameses 2nd, the Greeks used to go to Egypt to learn medicine, and yet again, we can blame the shit of islam for the loss of much of the records, Great library of Alexandria anyone?
    No, as a small “c” Christian, I am far happier believing in a somewhat distant deity whose commands to me are basically “don’t be a dick” than “well, there was all this nothing which went BANG and now we’ve got Platypusses and such” I disagree with Einstein saying God does not play dice, I think he not only plays, but will swap them for loaded ones if you take your eye off the table for an instant, but also ultimately means you well, for a given value of ‘well’.

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    • This part of Scotland is riddled with stone circles. We guess at what they were built for but we don’t really know. Maybe one day they’ll wonder what the Statue of Liberty was made for.

      The Great Library of Alexandria is now the Internet. All it will take this time is a solar flare and… it’s gone.

      The information that has survived is that which was chiselled in stone. Maybe we should revisit that…

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  7. They do not seem to have been an expansionist civilisation, they aren’t recorded as being like the Greeks and Romans and many others who were so bored with their own countries they felt the need to invade someone else’s. India has been invaded many times throughout history but they showed no interest in invading anyone else.”

    You might find this (and links within!) interesting reading then; worth reading to end.

    Catastrophic English: India in Britain

    They preceded the Greeks and Romans. Perhaps also even some were the Sea Peoples?

    Catastrophic English: India In Greece

    A wealth of interesting reading at his site. I only seem to look in every month or so, lots unread.
    But over some years, lots read too. A search box. Quite a few category tags. Comments.

    There was a 5 year Yuga too, in earlier times. Search there for yuga, it’s the first hit.

    Regards ~

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  8. At an estimated age of 5 billion years, the Sun will enjoy another 5 billion years of relatively stable energy output. By then, if we haven’t figured out a way to leave Earth, we will perish.

    And then there are comets and meteors. In 1996 comet Hyakutake was discovered only 4 months before its closest approach to the Sun because its orbit was tipped strongly out of the plane of our solar system, precisely where nobody was looking. While en route it came within 10 million miles of Earth – a narrow miss.

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