In my story The Stars Came Back faster-than-light travel and anti-gravity was accomplished by some general hand-waving and techno-babble about physics implied to be more advanced than what we have today here on earth. But what if… what if our fundamental understanding of physics is wrong? Not just in the way that General and Special relativity supposedly updated and refined Newtonian physics, but that the basic underlying principled about the universe, including the math in Einstein’s theories, are flat-out wrong? What if all the string-theory research, phycisists looking for dark matter, scientists trying to perfect nuclear fusion, etc., are all barking up the wrong tree in terms of the basic nature of the problems they are working with? Here are some things for the science and engineering sorts to geek out on. It is looking more and more likely that they are. Continue reading In witch the fiziks are rong
Category Archives: History
Christmas Music
Sabaton released “Christmas Truce” a month or so ago. Powerful song.
Four items here: official video, lyric video, a history video, then some of my various thoughts and observations.
Three-minute summary of the history of slavery, suitable for a HS history class
Deliberately omitting essential information needed to understand something is a “lie of omission.” This is a common problem in school, sometimes for understandable reasons like time limitations, other times for bad reasons like pushing a political agenda. Just about every people of any significance in world history has practiced slavery, and been slaves. Continue reading Three-minute summary of the history of slavery, suitable for a HS history class
A remote/home school teaching/inspiration idea
I had a homeschooling / tutoring / mostly remote teaching idea. Still need to flesh it out, but here is the general idea: Continue reading A remote/home school teaching/inspiration idea
Fear is the mind-killer
I have, and have read, Meerloo’s “Rape of the mind” which is one of the books this draws heavily on. Very good, if rather depressing. This is an excellent video, with some good sources, not very long, and interesting artwork. It’s clear what they are talking about, without explicitly saying it and getting banned by EweTube. at about te 15 minute mark, when they are talking about isolation and desperation and offing a way out, that’s where we are now.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
Historical comparison, colonial to now, by Claire Wolf
Here is a short article on the comparisons between slowly heating animosity between colonial citizens and the English crown and elites, and a brief outline of their individual and collective delusions about the truth of the situation they were in, and how things changed and what they did with that realization.
Books on stuff
Sometimes you fall down a rabbit hole and find all kinds of stuff. Maybe it’s things you know a little bit about, and you find out there is more science behind it than you thought, maybe it is a totally new thing that makes you go “uhhhh.. huh?” So here is a list of books and papers that I’ve come across recently that look at some part of the world in a totally different way than conventional wisdom, all put in one place just because reasons… Continue reading Books on stuff
Alternate history, or real history
I came across this on Social Galactic. Fascinating video. A two hour rant about who really runs things, etc. He says it’s the life insurance companies. Has a lot of history and science and economics, some really good, some really out there. But a very good presentation.
Fauci Dossier PDF mentioned at 55 min. The quote there is… enlightening.
Stalin’s War
An interview with Dr. Sean McMeekin, author of “Stalin’s War,” one of several books he’s written about the former Soviet Union and Russia.
Links to his Amazon page here, though I’d recommend you buy his books elsewhere if you can for various political reasons.
Self-sealing fuel tanks
I’ve read about self-sealing fuel tanks, usually in reference to WWII aircraft, but I never learned how they work. Came across the following video to explain it. It is surprisingly simple, and he’s got a pretty nifty demo to illustrate it, too.