GPL's Blog

It has dumbfounded me for sometime; so much so that I had to write about it.  What I am referring to is how illogical it is to sue the government for something a government official/employee did or did not do.  It appears that most people think suing the government for some perceived wrong is the right thing to do, but it really is not.  Think about it.  Or better yet, let me break it down for you with reference to a government “bad” that has been in the news currently.  I am talking about the thousands of young Americans who over decades were forcibly sterilized and now government plans to compensate them with some dollar amount; $50,000.00.

To begin with, some tax-dollar funded government group/agency is given the power to decide who they can exercise a power over that results in arguably forcible sterilization of those persons.  Some committee is gathered together at the tax payers’ expense to decide who is to exercise this power and when.  Then more tax dollars are spent paying the empowered individual(s) to make individual case-by-case determinations.  Then more tax dollars are spent enforcing the sterilization on the alleged victims.  Then more tax dollars are spent on performing the sterilization itself.  Then years later, when some one complains and there is money to be made, a law suit is born.  Lawyers are hired on both sides and and more tax dollars are spent.  The lawyers on the government side don’t want to hand out any more tax dollars than necessary, so more tax dollars are spent paying the government lawyers to decide how they can payout less.  Then a dollar amount is decided on and where do you think that money comes from?  The government doesn’t print new money.  The government officials involved in the alleged wrong doing don’t pay anything out of their pockets.  No the government officials/agencies involved in the alleged wrong walk away having made their money on the alleged wrong.  They walk away unscathed.  But someone pays, right?  Of course someone pays; you and me pay with more tax dollars.  We did nothing wrong and yet we pay.  Even the individuals collecting pay.  Because the money has to come from somewhere and the alleged wrong doing officials aren’t going to pay it.  The money comes out of tax-funded programs available for the needy.  The money comes from raised taxes on all of us.  Why is this?  This is because our government has built immunity into itself allowing government officials to do or not do things that may at some future date be considered wrong and compensable.  So think twice before suing the government.  YOU may become rich, but your new found wealth will be at the expense of all of us innocent tax payers who are barely able to pay our bills and cannot afford another tax hike.

Oh, and just in case you are one of those people who respond by saying, “well, you know in our form of government you elected those government officials and so we must collectively pay for the alleged wrong.”  I have this to say.  We do not choose the individuals in office.  We can only vote for the names put in front of us.  They decide to run or – worse – are appointed.  Committees are formed, not by our vote.  Laws are put into force, not by our vote.  We do not live in a democracy.  We live in a republic, which is becoming increasingly more totalitarian.  We should not be blamed for wrong doings by elected officials – and most assuredly we should not be blamed for wrong doings by appointed officials.  For tax payers to be at fault, the alleged wrong doing should be the result of a law created by popular vote and then only those who voted for it should join in the fault.  And even more blame should be heaped on those people who carried it out.  But that is not how it works in our form of government.  And the case in point brings up another flaw in suing the tax payer; many of those accused of doing the wrong doing are dead.  In a case for an alleged wrong that happened many years ago, many of the tax payers who foot the bill for the alleged wrong may not even have  been old enough to vote or even alive at the time the government officials committed the alleged wrong; and, yet they pay.  This is illogical and it is wrong!  It is similar to blaming my six-month-old child for slavery because she is white.

Do not get me wrong.  I agree, in the case at hand, that those people sterilized should not have been forcibly sterilized.  In my opinion, it was wrong!  What I disagree with is suing me and my family and my friends and my neighbors for something we did not do and we could not prevent from happening.  It is illogical, it is wrong, and it is merely more government officials doing more wrongs.  Using tax dollars to pay for their wrong doings.

I am dumbfounded at the end of every Republican primary to discover Ron Paul never wins.  I am more astounded to find that Ron Paul finishes near the bottom.  How is it that the people of this great Country cry out for change; they cry out for something other than the “same old, same old” and then they vote for the “same old, same old.”.  Nothing new.  Nothing changes. Mitt Romney, Rich Santorum, Newt Gingrich – same old.

Comedians make a living make light of politicians in office.  They make light of Congress, the Senate, Governors, the Supreme Court Justices and the President.  Why is that?  Are these politicians really as bad as the jokes claim?  Why are political comedians so popular?  The comedian Bill Maher for example.  Is there truth and validity, to the things people like Bill Maher say about these politicians?  I think if asked, most people would say “yes!”  So, why do the American people continue to vote for the same old politicians?  Why is that Ron Paul, a 76 year-old doctor, someone who has a strong base amongst the youth, someone who advocates for “real” change, not just the politicization of  the word “change,” is constantly at the bottom of the polls?   In my 54 years as an American citizen, I have never witnessed a politician running for the presidency who made me believe what he says like Ron Paul makes me believe.  I have never before heard the same message come out of a politician’s mouth when he speaks from state primary to state primary such as Iowa, New Hampshire, S.Carolina, Florida, Nevada, etc. as I have from the mouth of Ron Paul.  Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and the other republican candidates who left the field seem to change their speeches to fit the audience.  Smart people know this, but seem to ignore it.  Why?

Why do so many people in this Country talk about peace.  Why do so many people claim peace is so important.  Why do they say they are afraid of the “war-like nations.”  Why do they ask, “why are all these other countries so warlike and not peace loving like us?”  And, in the same breath, these peace-speaking people say lets attack this country and that country.  They then say we  must so to prevent those other countries from attacking us, because we love peace and the other countries love war.  Do they listen to their own words?  Preemptive war is not peace.  It is first strike and it is war. Peace is something Ron Paul is advocating.  Not turning this Country into a door mat like the war hawks want all to believe.  But peace; the avoidance of attacking and killing other people.  Peace where one does not start a war unless threatened to the point of necessity of war.  Peace where one does not park tanks and missiles and personal demands in the backyards of other nations – unless the other nations threaten us with the same.  I find it interesting that it is acceptable these days for our government to intervene (nice word – really means attack and conquer) in the affairs of other nations with military force like it is our right and personal invitation from the people of the other nation.  Think about it.  What if China or Iran set up missile bases in Canada and Mexico and aimed them at us?  We would scream these other nations are threatening us and demand they leave and take their weapons with them.  Isn’t that what the Cuban Missile Crisis was about?  How is this different than when the U.S. does the same in other countries?  What if during the sixties when the Black Civil Rights movement was in full bloom if Russia or China decided to speak out to the world that the U.S. is a repressive regime and Russia and China were going to exercising their right to protect human rights everywhere by “intervening” militarily in U.S. affairs with the intent to overthrow the  U.S. government and free the repressed black American?  And, what if  they claimed the people of the U.S. would want them to intervene.  Would that give them the right?  Wouldn’t we respond to such attacks on our national sovereignty with words or actions showing that this is our country and we will resolve our own problems?  Isn’t that the meaning of sovereignty?  Isn’t it proper to say that there is a reason there is not one government in the world but many governments because different people have different ways and the sovereignty of each nation should be respected?  Even if we do not agree with how a particular nation is run?  Even if it is bad? And, why is Ron Paul’s consistent recital of how a declaration of war is to be made – according to the Constitution ignored, by the government, the candidates and the people?  Do we not believe in our own Constitution?  Don’t all the politicians claim we are a country of laws?  If so, shouldn’t they be advocating that we all follow the biggest law of our land?  The Constitution.  Only Ron Paul believes in peace and following the laws of this nation.  Not just the laws a candidate chooses, but all the laws.  Is that a bad thing?

This is a nation that advocates freedom of religion.  But many people miss the meaning thereto.  It does not mean the freedom of one religion to dominate all others.  It means the freedom of ALL religions to express their beliefs freely, but not to the detriment of the others.  Oh by the way atheism is included in the meaning of this constitutional article.  The Constitution is meant to protect all of us, not just the religious.  Religion is a philosophy and our Constitution is meant to protect all such philosophies.  And there is a reason the U.S. Constitution demands separation of church and state.  If there is no separation of the executory, statutory and judiciary from the philosophical, there is great risk of dominance of one philosphy over another.  So why is Ron Paul (not an atheist by the way) the only candidate to advocate separation of church and state? I cringe when a candidate says he looks to God for guidance.   Shouldn’t a good presidential candidate follow the Constitution?  Shouldn’t a good presidential candidate wisely separate his/her religious beliefs from upholding and executing the office of the Presidency?  I cannot believe Rick Santorum can do that.  His religious beliefs will affect how he executes his oath of office.  Just ask his dutiful wife and home-schooled children.

And why is that so many believe a rich business man can run the country better than anyone else.  How many rich business men have recently driven to your home in their Mercedes, on their way to their mansion or vacation home in Hawaii  to offer you a financial bailout to pay those outstanding credit card bills or help you make payment on the mortgage you are behind on?  No, my mistake, I must be thinking of the bailout to the banks of OUR tax dollars.  It seems WE help the rich get richer, and if the rich fall, we catch them and make sure they stay rich.  But the rich do not help the poor.  So why do people believe Mitt Romney will bet even $10,000 on us?  Big business sends our  jobs overseas.  That is one reason why China is so much better off financially than us.  Business men look out for themselves.  That is how they get rich.  Romney did not get rich by giving away his money.  What makes anyone believe he will be looking out for anyone but his own interests and that of his friends if elected.

And Newt Gingrich.  Don’t his years in office speak for him in volumes?  Doesn’t his arrogant personality define him?   I don’t think much more need be said about Newt Gingrich except to ask why he so strongly believes we should attack anyone who threatens Israel.  As far as I know this is the U.S., not Israel.  Israel is another country.  Why should we send my son or daughters to risk death defending a country not our own?  I love my country.  I love my children.  They are my first priority.  That is why I belong to club U.S., not club Israel or club France or club China.  I feel for anyone hurt or threatened anywhere in the world and I applaud people who care and who help others around the world, but our country should not be the big brother for every country in the world unless those other countries join our club and become another State and part of our club U.S..  We are struggling in this country.  People are out of work and those people with jobs are losing them.  We need hope here in this country for our people; for our children.  We cannot afford to intervene in the concerns of other nations at the drop of a hat.  We are a nation going bankrupt.  Look at our growing national debt.  We are a nation that needs to hold onto our money and resources to help us and our children.  We need to protect our borders, not the borders of other nations.  Gingrich is a war hawk.  History speaks volumes about nations that try to dominate the world by being involved in every war, by attempting to control the destiny of all; they fail and they fade away into history.

So, why is Ron Paul so far behind the other candidates in all these primaries?  I really do not know.  Except that maybe … peace is not what the world wants; war is preferable.  Maybe a solvent economy is not all that meaningful to most people.  Maybe jobs and a higher standard of living isn’t all that important.  Maybe a candidate who believes in the U.S. Constitution and equal rights for all peoples no matter sex, race, religion or philosophy isn’t a good thing.  Maybe a candidate who didn’t spend his life making personal riches at the expense of others isn’t a president we can brag about.  Maybe he’s just old and wise, not frivolous and young.  Whatever the reason, I do not understand because Ron Paul would make the best President this country has ever seen.

I developed and posted on Google Play (fka Google Market) an arcade game I made for Android phones called “Krazy Kat.”  Check it out.  It is only 99 cents!  What do you have to lose, but 99 pennies, and who needs pennies anymore?

It’s a fun game.  You play the part of  the dog and you have to bite all these crazy cats that are springing out the old lady’s never empty bag of cats.  If you bite the cats, you score points.  If the cats get by you, you lose some life; you have three lives to start the game.  And, if the cats get by you or you bite the wrong cat, you suffer the indignity of watching each victorious cat moonwalk away from you in triumph.  When you bite these crazy cats however, be wary of sickly cats (they are green) and black cats; biting these cats sends you closer to your death and cost you points.  Start the game out on “easy” or “normal” and then move up to “harder” when you grasp the idea.  Tip: swipe the dog up the screen to bite a cat.

Download Krazy Kats onto your Android phone, and have a “krazy” time.

I think I spend too much time obsessing about time.  You might think I have too much time on my hands to be so engrossed in such a timeless subject.  But then how do you spend your time?  Time is a subject that takes hold of the imagination of many of us.  I think it is safe to say that most people would love to not only think about time, but control time.  Think of the power one could wield controlling the movement and the speed of time.

Anyway, again I got to thinking about “what if” backward time were possible.  And, my thoughts went further than time travel, and I thought to muse over the ramifications of backward-time travel.  I do not believe backward-time travel possible, but I believe most physicists will agree that there is nothing mathematically that definitively discounts the possibility of backward-time travel.  S0, for the sake of the following discussion let us say backward-time travel is possible.  But, rather than focusing on scenarios like the time-travel exploits of Captain Picard or Doug and Tony through the Time Tunnel, I want to explore a particular idea that has permeated my mind for some time now.  What if we are all in a Universe where time is traveling backward now?  Would we know it?

I find nothing to dismiss the possibility of matter moving in more than one direction; up, down, forward and “backward.”  Time is tied to space and just as the clock can be rewound, the space (matter) connected to time can be “undone.”  But, would we know it?  As I live my life, and when I take the time to think about how I am living my life and how I am using my time, I have the ever-present feeling that I am doing so in a forward direction.  But would I know otherwise?  If time were running backwards would I be aware it was running backwards?  Every event that happened would unwind.  Every event that happened would cease to be as if it never were.  How would I know this?  I do not believe I would.

Too often the motion of time is compared to a filmstrip; a timeline.  But when I look at a filmstrip; when I look at each cell on that film strip, forward and or backward, I am doing so from the outside.  I am an outside observer.  I am not an object on one of those cells on the filmstrip.  Just as we observe the many SCI-FI TV shows and movies about time travel, we do so from the advantage point of an outside observer.  We are not on the TV show.  We are not a character in the SCI-FI movie.  We are outside.  But, if our time is traveling backward as I write, it is our time, and we are within that space and time; we are inseparable from our film, our space and time.

I think a better comparison pertaining to this thought than film is that of paper and an eraser.  If I total my life from birth to death and set it out on paper, and I then start erasing my life from death to birth, the paper will only evidence as much of my life as still remains on the paper at any given time.  What is erased is gone and for all purposes, it never was.  Or, maybe a better object of comparison is a tape recorder and my voice recorded thereon.  As an outside observer, I can listen to my recorded voice in a  forward or backward directi0n, but as the voice on the tape itself, i.e. to say, if I examine the rewinding of the tape from the vantage point of my recorded voice on the tape, and not as an outside observer listening to the recording, I am only aware of what is playing as it is playing and what has played vanishes from my reality as quickly as played.  Our minds are predisposed to think of time as having direction, forward and backward, but maybe direction is our way of labeling time and forward is backward or forward, all dependent on one’s relative perspective.

If our time is running backward, all evidence of our movement in that direction is being erased as time moves backward.  No different than if time is running forward.  We live in the present.  Once an event occurs it is done and gone; erased, but still in our memories.  So, one might believe that if time is running backward we would remember the future and the past would be the new unknown future.  But, what if that is not how it works?  What if causation is fixed relatively and what if relativity exposes another “t.”  What if time moving backward is relative to time moving forward?  And, what if time affects our memories in only one direction?  Then our moving backward in time would leave us oblivious to what just occurred in our past, which is the future for someone living in forward moving time.  We would only remember the moment; the present.  And, we would remember the past, which in reality is our future.  But, we would perceive time as moving forward and past as having occurred, when in reality our past has yet to happen.  “Deja Vu.”

We grow accustomed to our environment and we accept that which makes life manageable; physically and psychologically.  We perceive time as moving forward; causation intact and moving one direction, and maybe causation is intact.  But, if our time was such that our time was moving backward, we would perceive that as “the norm” and adjust our thinking and rationalizations accordingly.

For time to exist in the sense of being traversable, I think it necessary to believe that events which are destined to happen, have happened.  Destiny.  Fate.  And, if that is so, causation is preserved.  But, we have no perception that we are moving in reverse.  No perception that our futures have occurred and our futures are unraveling into our pasts which, for us, have yet to occur.

I leave this topic with this request.  Record your voice and play it back in reverse.  And as you listen to your soliloquy unravel, image being that voice on the recording; separate from the you who recorded it.  Imagine your world, your memories, unraveling and think about the possibility of living your life in reverse.

Hey.  While I have your attention, I have a query I would like to present to you for thought.  I am not looking for an answer, merely opinions and thoughts.  I have been interested in the subject of “time” for some time now (no pun intended) and, I am curious what the professional-scientific mind thinks about time traveling in reverse.

Minkowsky, after analyzing Einstein’s theory of special relativity, tied space and time together and banished absolute time to Newton’s past.  The two dimensions of space and time now considered to be forever intertwined.  Some physicists, and scientists in other fields of science, as well as novelists and science-fiction enthusiasts, believe this link between space and time leaves open the possibility of moving through time in reverse.  Their thought being, there is nothing in physics, or science in general, that precludes the possibility of moving in both directions on the timeline.  I disagree.

Einsteinian time looks to specific relations of objects in space-time in which to make its measurement of time.  The train against the platform.  The rocket against the rocket.  The ship against the port.  But, what if there is no train or platform.  No rockets.  No ship or port to dock a ship.  If all material objects are removed from space-time.  If all elements are removed from space-time.  If the very last atom is removed from space-time.  What happens to time?  Time ceases to exist.  Time is a measurement of movement.  If something exists, but does not move, time still exists.  The measurement of non-movement is the equivalent of the Indian (east, not west) creation of “0.”  But, if nothing exists, there is nothing to measure; no object in relation to another.  Even Einsteinian then time ceases to exist.

So, what does this have to do with time travel?  Time travel suggests a separation of time from space.  For a man to travel backward in time, he would have to rip a piece of space (himself) apart from a specific point in time and paste himself over another piece of space in another point in time elsewhere.  Doesn’t this violate the  First Law of Thermodynamics?  Unless, the plural times is considered the true closed unit.  What about the hole in space and the space pasted over?  Does one supplant the other?  Backward-time travel has more problems than causation (although that certainly is a major hurdle – but discussed so much by others, I will not discuss it here).  To travel backwards in time, there must be a backward space-time destination.  Time travel seems to suggest that matter does not modify itself into a future self, but replicates itself similar to a replicating cell; the past never ceases and so the future always has been.  This seems very difficult to grasp as reality.  This thought leads to parallel universes, which may exist, but again, that is another topic which requires much discussion; although, not here.  It seems logical that objects move in a direction.  We label this direction “forward.”  We define “forward” by the use of such words as “causation.”  But whether an object moves forward or backward, it moves in a direction.  When the object moves, we measure that movement by time.  The ability to measure said movement does not equate to an ability to “un-do” said movement, which is an equivalent of backward movement in time.  Backward time travel is tantamount to undoing the movement made.

It is very easy with the electronic marvels we have today to confuse film with reality.  Movies look extremely realistic these days; especially with HD screens.  But, because a movie can be rewound does not mean reality can be rewound.  Movies are the captured images and sounds of reality on a medium from which they can be shown over and over again.  But that is not Clark Gable on the movie being watched.  That is the captured reflection of photons off of Clark Gable and the captured sound waves that emanated from Clark Gable; a Clark Gable who has been dead for some years now.  Just as so many of the stars seen in the night sky are reflections of light bounced off celestial bodies; celestial bodies that have long since changed since the light first bounced off of their surface.  To further the analogy, backward-time travel would imply that that which was still is and always will be, or at least was “captured” and recorded somehow, somewhere.

Worm holes are another interesting subject associated with the possibility of time travel.  The bending of space upon itself such that the future cone of one space-time overlaps the past cone of another space-time.  and, a tunnel exists or is made between the future and the past creating a shortcut not only through space, but time.  First, I see how the bending of light (photons) or gravity (a force) changes time (movement).  That lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) man who rockets off into space at near the speed of light, then subsequently returns to Earth some twenty years later to find himself (relatively speaking) two-hundred years in the future; his family and friends long since deceased.  The movement of the rocket man at the speed of light slowed his movement (timed alias: growth/aging) relative to his family and friends on Earth.  But, the rocket man’s movement was slowed, not reversed.  There is a difference between slow movement forward and movement in reverse.

Back to worm holes.   Curious no one mentions how the Universe can be so warped, so bent over itself, that a future cone can overlap a past cone and a worm hole can find itself opening a door between the past and the future.  That seems quite a bend in the Universe.  If there was a warranty on the Universe (valid past the first 5 billion years {thousand years if you are religious}), something should have called it in for repair before the warranty expired.  But even if worm holes do exist, more logically, a connection would be made between two areas of space occupying, relatively, equivalent measurements of movement (time).  Causation …  and, the connection(s) would be between close areas of space-time effected by gravitational warping in that area; or, the connection(s) would be between extremely separated areas of space-time in a curved Universe.

And, what about that well-known Star Trek trick of sling-shooting around the Sun into the past.  It is fact the sling-shot effect, using the gravity of celestial bodies such as the Moon and Jupiter (to name a couple) has enabled NASA to explore the farthest reaches of our Solar System, but it has not propelled space craft into the past.  And, what about that long sought after, faster than light particle, the tachyon; Star Trek, the Next Generation, made storyline use of tachyons quite often.  Can tachyons send messages to the past defeating causation?  Imagine a man made of tachyons (big leap here).  T-Man is traveling forward on the time line at his usual tachyon speed; out racing all other objects/particles that are denied the ability to travel at or near the speed of light.  T-Man is even out speeding light itself.  So, T-Man (when he looks back at us turtles and light also traveling forward on the timeline) sees us moving in reverse.  It appears to T-Man he is witnessing time moving backward.  But what T-Man is actually witnessing is the late reception of the photons making their way to him.  T-Man is so much faster than light that his movement in relation to our movement, and light, does not allow the light to catch up, and so it appears in reverse.  But T-Man’s movement (timed) and our movement (timed) and the movement of light (timed) are all moving forward.  This effect is similar to our reception here on Earth of the light from long-ago stars in the night sky.  And, similar like playing two movies in a forward direction on a timeline, but at different speeds; from the perspective of the faster playing movie, the slower playing movie is moving in reverse.  Both movies, however, are moving forward.

The bottom line is this:  time travel into the future is possible with the right technology, but only into a future that is yet to exist.  It is made possible by slowing a man’s movement relative to that of other men.  Time travel into the past, however, is not possible.  Movement, although it can be in a forward or backward direction, is always measured (timed) in a forward direction.  Even the movies we watch over and over again; the movies we rewind to hear the joke the comedian made while our kids were talking; are rewound in a forward (timed) direction.  Causation preserve us.

It would be great to travel into the past.  Personally, I know I would have been President if I could travel back in time and get an “A” on that third-grade quiz; well, maybe not … but it would be a great way to spend my vacation.  Think of the fun I could have and the trouble I could get into and then back out of again.   And, the best part,  I could come home before I left; it would not cost a dime in vacation pay.

What are your thoughts?