Time travel. Science or Fiction?

'Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.' -- A. Einstein

One of quite a few unsolved problems in physics, but are there really any solved problems or it’s just an illusion? For most people time travel is a common plot device in science fiction, although I’ve always considered travel to the past a sort of Deus Ex Machina, since it doesn’t make much sense to me. Conversely, the possibility of time travel to the future is arguably deducible / inferred from special and general relativities based on the phenomenon of gravitational and time dilation linked to the speed of the observer.

An example of time travel, specifically a kind of twins paradox, can be found as early as in Hindu mythology, the Mahabharatha tells the story of the King Revaita, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth. The Japanese tale of "Urashima Tarō" first described in the Nihongi (720), and the Talmud story of Choni HaMeagel deal with a similar concept. Looks like Einstein’s idea wasn’t that new after all.

I wonder how scientists imagine actual time-travel to the future, but I think it’s just an abstract idea rather than a practical possibility. First of all, an astronaut would have to move nearly at the speed of light to create time dilation, but no living creature could survive the ride (at least those we know) since matter at such velocities will turn into energy according to the relativity. Even if he were able to travel at such a breakneck pace and come back to the Earth in one piece, he wouldn’t find himself in HIS personal future, but in the future of those who stayed behind.

How would time flow aboard the ship moving at the speed of light?

While the astronaut thinks his clock is ticking at a normal rate, from the physical point of view of the local observer (in their rest frame), for instance, the people on the Earth, the astronaut’s clock is slow.
The greater the spaceship’s relative speed, the slower the on-board clock, again for the local observer (Earth). Since any motion is relative for inertially moving systems, the clock on the Earth will also seem to be slow to the astronaut, so that he’ll see that in his frame of reference a hundred years have passed, but only one on the Earth. Who will look older to whom? A paradox?

While the astronaut have lived a year, a hundred have passed for the local observer (Earth), but the astronaut is always in his own present and measured off just one year of his life, his personal life span won’t be longer than that of an inhabitant of the Earth and he will age at the same rate from his point of view. By the way, how would he count his years? I guess only with a clock.

My take is that the one who makes an effort and creates the acceleration is really moving, at least from physical point of view. It’s like debating on what is moving, the train or the station. This is of course a layman’s approach, but that’s all I’m able to make of it right now.

However, if the astronaut accelerates, travels into space and then comes back to the Earth (as in the twin paradox), he will be the one who has aged less. It looks like he who accelerates has an advantage.

According to general relativity time dilation effects can also occur if one observer is deeper in a gravity well than the other, the deeper in the well the slower the clock; this effect is taken into account when calibrating the clocks on the satellites of the Global Positioning System, and it would make observers at different distances from a black hole age at a different rate. Still, all these phenomena hardly qualify for time travel in the strict meaning of the word.

In my book, written by my simple mind, travel into the future is meeting your older self or visiting the world where your descendants live so that you can either watch or interact with them. And why would anyone want to travel to the future? The only benefit would be watching the ruck suffer pangs of envy at seeing you so much younger than them.

Now, travel to the past looks even weirder. Assuming it’s possible to travel back in time, I doubt the traveller would be able to change anything (like going back and killing your grandparents, as many would love), since we wouldn’t occupy any physical space and be as a kind of invisible observers. It would be like looking into the past through a one way transparent mirror. Since every object in the universe has a unique world line, therefore going back in time would mean bending the same object’s world line back on itself, or two objects would occupy the same point in the world line, which physicists say hardly makes any sense. In science fiction that would lead to mutual annihilation.

On the other hand, there could emerge "an ensemble of parallel universes" every time the traveller kills the grandfather — the act took place in (or triggered the creation of) a parallel universe in which the traveller's counterpart will never be born as a result. However, his existence in the original universe remains unaltered. This makes much more sense to me, since it wouldn’t violate the causality — a fundamental principle of theoretical particle physics and sane world.

But what would be the way of winding up in the past? Those in the know say there are basically three methods of pulling it off successfully:

1. Travelling faster than the speed of light

2. The use of cosmic strings and black holes

3. Wormholes and Alcubierre drive.

Well, faster-than-light travel is a good choice since it will be seen as travelling backwards in time in some other frames of reference. Picture an object nearly on a collision course with you, travelling faster than light — you won’t see it coming, but you’ll see it leaving. Actually you’ll see two different images (tachyons) after it’s passed you by: one will be an approaching blue Doppler-shifted image, the other will be red-shifted light from the departing object — at least that’s how hypothetical tachyons would behave. But then again whose past would you see? That of the object, of course, not yours. Anyway, it’s highly improbable a human eye can perceive any close to light speed motion.

Although special and general relativity rule out FTL speeds locally, non-local means might be available, which means moving with space instead of moving through space. This is what was called warp drive in Star Trek and Alcubierre drive in science. It would be quite a comfortable way to get around: all you’d have to do is to create a wave in the space that would travel faster than light and thus take you to your destination before a light beam travelling outside the warp bubble would. Therefore no superluminal speed would be actually involved — the ship would be but simply carried along with the region without suffering conventional relativistic effects such as time dilation.

But would you end up in the past? I wouldn't put my money on it.

Anyway, there’s no method to create such a warp bubble at the moment, unless we find an existing one, let alone how the ship would manage to get out of there.

According to general theory of relativity gravity can be illustrated in terms of curvature in space-time caused by mass-energy and the flow of momentum. There exist solutions to a system of field equations that permit what are called "closed time-like curves," and hence time travel into the past. It seems, though, it doesn’t fit in our universe. I wonder if mathematical solutions to equations always make sense in physics.

Another option is to create a sort of a spinning cylinder using cosmic strings, but none have been discovered as yet or seem possible to create. As for me, it sounds quite nonsensical.

Wormholes, whose existence is allowed by general relativity, are my favourite and, in my humble opinion, the most plausible (in theory) means of taking the shortcuts around the universe. A ship could travel through Lorentzian traversable wormholes to any part of that same universe very quickly, or even jump from one universe to another. Does this mean it would travel to the past?

Anyway, much as you try, Novikov self-consistency principle or the notion of branching parallel universes would prevent you from changing anything in the past, or at least that’s what most scientists believe.

Another argument against such possibility is that we haven’t been overwhelmed by tourists from the future (Stephen Hawking), unless they are disguising themselves (Carl Sagan).

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Breaking down the Bible. (Genesis, 1)

I’ve always believed that the Bible was one of the most abstruse, mysterious and mind-boggling books ever written in the world. That explains why there have been so many interpretations of the same text, none of which made the meaning any clearer, though. No doubt it’s a record of historical events, moral guidance and words of wisdom, but I wonder how much of its text had been added by Pharisees, Christian priests seeking to manipulate and enslave the uncultured masses, or lost in translation. As an Italian saying goes: traduttore — traditore (a translator — a traitor).

Then, one day it struck me that I could start a series of posts about things I never managed to understand in the Holy Writ and those I think I do, but not in an orthodox way. Since such questions haunt many independent spirits, I’ll try to make my measly contribution to the great task of enlightening muddled minds, including mine. So without further ado, I’m setting off.

Genesis 1:1

‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’

Well, this poses the same question as the Big Bang theory: what was before the Big Bang or, better say, what was God doing before creating the heaven and the earth? In case of the Big Bang string theory says it was caused by the collision of two p-branes that existed before, resulting in creation of our universe. At least makes some sense.

As for God, supposedly He has existed and will for ever, which means eternity, a concept difficult to grasp for a mortal mind. Was He just meditating and, according to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, contemplating His own thought process? Or was He creating other universes, earths and living creatures?

                                                                                          

The history of the known universe only encompasses a few days of God’s everlasting activity, with the creation of physical laws, the building of solar system with its planets and the launch of the evolution of life forms (yes, Darwin’s evolution) on the earth squeezed into 7 days.

Genesis 1:26

‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’

First of all, why the perfect, self-contained being would want to create someone outside Himself is anybody’s guess. May be when divine boredom grabbed hold He thought that some kind of show was a good idea, either that or He had some vested interest we obviously haven’t cracked yet. Can the perfect being get bored? Doesn’t seem logical, but we’ll talk about God’s feelings down the line.

Another riddle is the usage of the plural pronoun “our” with the singular word “image”! Was there anyone else with God there who shared image with Him, or did He mean His plural nature, that is, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? Assuming the latter is true, who do we take after and look like: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit or the three altogether? Beats me, how come the Maker, that is perfection, produced such a flawy copy of Himself; unless that was the idea, but, then again, why?

Secondly, knowing what kind of creature he created (because the perfect being would know, wouldn’t He?), why would He punish fish, fowl, cattle and every creeping thing by letting man have dominion over them? Weren’t they innocent by default?

Genesis 1:27

'So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.'

The fact that He created someone in His own image suggests He was in desperate need of a companion, which is contradictory for, again, the perfect being. Besides, if we judge people by the company they keep..., but of course you can’t measure God by human standards.

What’s more, I’m at a loss to understand what was the woman created for? Why not a hermaphrodite instead? Or was she designed to keep His companion company? Like buying a toy for your pet? Or the show promised more fun with two genders? Although a romantic would argue that love was meant to warm or spice up our otherwise tedious lives, by keeping our minds off our miseries.

To be continued...

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The Apocalypse in 2012?

What’s on the cards?

First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my followers and whoever happens to drop by!
Thank you for making time to visit my site. I wish 2010 would be one of the happiest years of our lives. (Ben, I haven't found a link to your site. The same goes for you, Tim Greenway)

“But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.”

If this question didn’t jump out at me so often on the Internet, it wouldn’t even come into my mind to seriously consider it. However, just because the Mayan calendar ends on Dec 21st 2012 many people seem to be fretting about possible cataclysms that could wipe us out of existence and there’re a lot of theories about what possible events could trigger off Doomsday looming large on the horizon since the dawn of time. Why on earth does everyone seem to attach so much significance to this calendar that some researchers claim the Maya simply took from an earlier Olmec civilization?

Anyway, it's not the only blood-curdling prophecy. In the late 1990s, there was an astrologer in Russia who foretold among other catastrophes that New-York would suffer severe terrorist attacks at the turn of the century. I dismissed them as hearsay or a would-be seer's gibberish at the time, but on 11/S it immediately sprung to mind. Unsettling, isn't it? Another of his prophecies of doom and the only one I remember, which I now regret, was that UK was going to sink into the ocean some time before 2050.

Throughout history humankind have always stayed in denial and refused to acknowledge the ominous signs of oncoming disaster until it’s too late — it's in our very nature. When it finally strikes many people die, mostly the poor, who are expendable — the top rich usually have access to the first-hand information and always manage to save their hides. Volcano eruptions, Katrina, Bhopal, Chernobyl, WW2, Mad Cows, etc, etc serve are a shining example of social class inequalities.

On one hand, our civilization is in the state of flux — there're too many people on this planet for the available resources and the insatiable appetite of the greedy bunch, so, like it or not, the problem has to be addressed. If we don’t (a virus is a useful tool, although contamination is doing a great job, too), Nature will.
Species that can't keep its number in balance is doomed to die out due to starvation when it destroys its habitat, in the animal world predators are key to population control, humans are supposed to know better.

Personally, I don’t believe in exact dates (or I don’t want to), instead catastrophes are more likely to strike when we least expect them just to screw us better — it’s Sod’s law. The point is that whether polar shift or any other disaster, natural or man-made, is going to happen gradually or suddenly is anybody’s guess! And scientists haven't the remotest idea how the weather patterns would change if any of these calamities should take place. Mind that they even seldom forecast weather properly much further ahead than the next week.

Cataclysmic pole shift is one of the hypotheses that are very much in the vogue these days, although it shouldn’t be muddled up with geomagnetic reversal, the periodic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (switching the north and south magnetic poles), since the term is sometimes used for both phenomena, which is beyond my ken. Pole shift is also called crustal displacement (picture yourself sliding from, say, Arctic zone to the tropics in a couple of hours without using any means of transport together with your home and landscape, but hardly in one piece). The geographic poles of the Earth are the points on the surface of the planet that are “pierced” by the axis of rotation. A sudden change in position of these “points” with respect to the underlying surface is what the hypothesis refers to.

Geomagnetic reversal is considered more plausible by the scientific community than pole shift hypothesis, and I give 0.0000....1% probability to the latter and 0.0000.......2% to the former.

Small magnetic pole shifts take place every year, but a total one could leave the planet without any magnetic field at all and therefore without protection against solar radiation for some time, enough for the atmosphere to fly away — which means all life on the Earth would be scorched or choke to death, although the exact order is open to discussion.

Magnetic reversal could be produced by the inner mantle and outer core changing direction or stopping its flow, but what would make them? There isn’t much scientific evidence to support these theories apart from the whole-frozen well-preserved bodies of a mammoth and rhino with fresh tropical fruits in their stomachs found in Siberia. We can also dread the prospect of black holes sucking up matter, the Earth’s cooling, impacts of asteroids or huge meteorites and the like — a wide range of bogeys to put us off real problems, unless there are some signs that I haven’t heard about.

A bunch of boffins smashing particles to create minuscule black holes in Hadron Collider (SERN) could be considered a bad sign? On its website expert wiseacres say openly they are looking forward to creating small black holes, which would prove the existence of multiple dimensions and, therefore, universes. No mention of how that would justify $600,000,000 of taxpayers’ money and how much would seep back into their pockets. ‘The results of such experiments are totally unpredictable at the moment.’ The word “unpredictable” is a telling example of how large are the leaps of faith science geeks are taking to justify their salaries.

‘But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I. told Live Science.

So there is a “minuscule” chance of messing it all up, he didn’t say “the chance is 0” for some reason (by the same token I have no more confidence in scientists than in pseudo scientists, prophets, or soothsayers) — that’s what I mean when I say that even the most absurd theory has an infinitesimal chance of proving true. For my money, if any cataclysm is going to happen it’ll be almost certainly of our own making, to put it more exactly, we’ll owe it to the scientists who brought this planet to the brink of disaster by providing the necessary tools for greedy plunderers.

Hadron Collider

You’d ask how we mere mortals are going to benefit from this will o’ the wisp, my best guess is that mankind will open a portal to parallel universes and move to greener pastures. But we’ll hardly live long enough to see that, so for the time being we can kiss our money goodbye.

Like I said, none of these theories trouble the quiet of my mind, but trying to be an open-minded person I grant at least 10-1000000....... % probability to any idea however nutty it might sound. There might be something to any statement independently of what I believe to be true. Abstractly or mathematically speaking there’s always at least an infinitesimal chance for any hypothesis not being beyond the realms of possibility. Like it or not, there exists an objective reality we’ll never get to comprehend fully.

In turn, no theory is ever 100% certain or complete — everything comes down to the count of probabilities, says quantum physics, and we still have a very vague idea of what really goes on in the universe, not to mention our planet. To think that we know anything for certain is pure hubris, which will probably be our downfall as a species.

Even if I don't buy any of Doomsday theories, that doesn’t entitle me to categorically rule out the 0.0000000....1% possibility of its coming true, neither would anyone with the ability to reason. I just leave some room for doubt precisely because humans aren’t infallible and can’t ever reach the absolute truth. The question isn’t whether to trust or not, but to what extent, nor what margin of error to allow, but that it simply exists. Some people try to see the world in black and white, yes or no; conversely, I try to see undertones. A 100% certainty is for God alone.

There are crackpots that can’t think of a better way of spicing up their otherwise boring lives than worrying about the explosion of the Sun in a massive super-nova, the fact that it’s going to happen million years or so from now and we’ll have long since become extinct by then doesn’t seem to allay their fear.

For mysteries, auguries and stuff lovers, as well as astrology buffs there are Nostradamus' predictions, which are so encoded, scrambled, disordered, abstruse and obscure that nobody has ever managed to actually make any positive sense of them. His writings lend themselves to so many dubious interpretations, that I wouldn't lose any sleep over their meaning, I honestly believe their meaning is lost for ever. Even if we could decipher all the prophecies, we wouldn't be able to head any disaster off, so why take the trouble to worry about it?

Mind that all his so-called fulfilled prophecies were matched to the events post factum! Well then, I could call myself a prophet, too, since I predicted, second-guessed or sensed certain events in my life with unsettling precision, as well as a couple of wars.

What use are the prophecies if we can't prevent them from happening? Apocalypse is full of doom-laden prophecies, but so far nobody has found a clue as to what events it might refer to.

Did they avoid the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11/01 etc?

It's not the prophecies, but contamination with all its attendant dangers that is really a good reason to be horrified. In addition, civilization dependent on electricity as much as ours is always at risk. Solar storm strong enough would disrupt electrical supply with catastrophic consequences.

While past generations thought they lived in end-times, we are indeed much closer to Doomsday than ever, because technological progress has never posed a greater threat to life on this planet than today.

I’d have confidence in science if it were combined with wisdom, but as A. Einstein once put it ‘modern technology is an axe in the hands of a maniacal psychopath’. There’s nothing more dangerous than intelligent fools. Even mainstream ideas should be broken down critically, just because a vast majority of people buy into them doesn’t mean they’re flawless.

Beats me what use  good scientific ideas are, if the bad ones are going to finish us off? I’d rather be led by common sense than trust either minorities or majorities.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The following products of human genius surely qualify as such: DDT, Asbestos, feeding sick sheep to vegetarian cows later fed to people, military experiments in Chernobyl, Nukes, gender-bending chemicals, biological weapons, fossil combustibles, stuffing our food with hormones and antibiotics, and the list goes on. Although I highly doubt the victims of these brilliant inventions wouldn’t prefer them to have been nipped in the bud! It seems we are definitely bent to sacrifice ourselves for more than questionable “modern comforts” and are dragging the Earth and soon the rest of the universe into the abyss with us.

Very few things invented by science have really proved beneficial (and if they did, for whom?).

Admittedly, many theories work (Nukes work, but can we control them once they went off?), but that doesn’t mean we fully understand why, and no serious scientist worth his/her salt would claim his/her theory as an absolute verity. Newton’s theory, for instance, was thought to be complete for a long time, and the rest is history. New evidence eventually turns up to either confirm or debunk ideas.

One of the last brilliant ideas is to use space shuttles (with all the pollution every launch would suppose) to produce energy in the space (by placing solar panels on the Moon, for example) and then beam it back to earth. Some bright minds recklessly propose to tackle Global Warming by increasing aerosol pollution (Global Dimming). Thank God their plot has been rejected...so far! I wish we could open these scientists sculls to figure out what mutations in their brain cells make them throw up such twisted ideas.

What seems faulty reasoning to some might look quite convincing to others. When asked how he hit on the idea of the relativity, Einstein said: ‘Everyone knew, I didn’t, that’s why I made a discovery.’

Some scientists now say that other scientists falsified the reports of rising temperatures, which smacks of professional rivalry and makes you wonder who is really pulling the strings. Personally I don’t see any telltale signs of climate change around me, so who should I trust? Yesterday it was Global Warming and they had enough scientific evidence to back it, today it’s Climate Change and again they have enough evidence. Contamination, in my opinion, is much more dangerous than a simple climate change, but if the latter is true, then the prediction I mentioned in one of my previous comments about the UK sinking into the ocean gains some credibility.

The problem is that nothing is ever enough for the disproportionate and ever growing world population. Modern throwaway society goes by the principle ‘Après nous le deluge’. Throughout the 20th century we basically tried to eat our cake and have it, that is, to contaminate but not have to suffer side effects. If we have a fairly good understanding of the current theories, how on earth have we ended up in this mess? What use is our expertise if it doesn’t stop us from destroying ourselves?

And tomorrow we’ll end up in a big Gas Chamber, because that’s what contamination is going to turn our planet into, and we’ll start to choke, unless we mutate into methane, CO2 etc breathing species. Whoever doubts we contribute to Climate Change must be living in cloud-cuckoo-land. I wish the future proved me wrong.

Those who say we aren’t causing climate change probably have already built themselves houses on Mars or elsewhere. I thought was kidding, but it turns out many corporations, businessmen, institutions, John Travolta and the like scramble for parcels of land on the Moon. The Lunar property company is raking it in issuing purchase documentation. Is it legal and what does it all mean? Is moon already colonised? Can you otherwise picture stingy millionaires throwing their money away on aerial palaces? 1m2 goes for $20. Quite a bargain! Hurry up!

Estates on Mars are up for grabs!

                                                                       Mars, for sale soon!                             

Everything has to do with greed and uncurbed ambition.

It’s in the 20th century that we lost moral grounds and science started to threaten our future ironically through our insatiable quest for comfort. Humankind survived thousands of years without sophisticated technology and just in about 150 years this very technology brought us to the brink of disaster! Isn’t that paradoxical?! What was supposed to make our lives better is actually destroying them.

Any thinking person should wonder if we chose the right path.

And now that we have come to know we are responsible for the harmful changes in our environment what measures are we going to take? Are we going to stop contaminating, using cars, planes etc, etc, etc? Nope, I’m afraid we can’t, even if we wanted to. We are trapped, forced into using modern technology and adopting modern lifestyle. One way or another we are all at fault.

So why would anyone waste their time thinking about an impending cataclysm? If it’s due to happen, it will anyway and there’s nothing we can do about it. I really don’t believe it’s going to happen so soon, but like I said, I might be wrong.

If knowledge is power and power corrupts, what can humanity do so as to survive?

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What does our perception of music depend on?

The Washington Post Experiment or the Flop of the L’Enfant Plaza.
(read the original article: “Pearls before Breakfast”)

'Beware the barrenness of a busy life.'
...................................Socrates

The following example illustrates the key factors in our perception of music and art in general.

A social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities was carried out at Washington subway station in the cold January morning a couple of years ago.

Stradivarius violin

One of the greatest violinists of our days played incognito at the station exquisite Bach pieces (among other great composers’ works) for
about an hour on a violin that costs 3.5 million dollars. Hardly anyone stopped, paid attention, or dropped a coin. Let alone recognizing him, while tickets to his concert usually cost 100$ on average.

Most people attributed it to the fact that it took place at an inappropriate hour when nearly everyone was rushing to catch a train to get to work, therefore hardly anyone could afford to stop to listen to buskers and thus risk losing their jobs.
“Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.” So there were hardly doctors, firemen, or anyone whose getting to work on time was a matter of life or death among the people streaming past a masterpiece that in Brahms’ words contains “a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings” and is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem to have evoked in the audience either thoughts or feelings. Must've fallen on stony ground.

If I were offered this story as a thought experiment, I would predict exactly the same result. What’s more, I’m pretty sure if the following day in the same context a different social experiment had been done — along the lines of a porn star performing a hot scene — far more people would’ve come up with tons of excuses for being late to work and would've crowded around.

First of all, it takes talent or the ability to perceive talent and beauty to recognize and appreciate such qualities.
It takes at least a rudimentary intellect to understand and enjoy classical music — mind, animals wouldn't stop either, although experiments in zoos showed that animals calmed down while listening to Mozart, but run amok at the first sounds of hard rock or heavy metal. The effect of classical music (or any other art form) on an individual is directly proportional to his/her intellect — the higher the intellect, the deeper the comprehension.

Beauty can't be explained, proved or tested — it's like vision, no-one can explain to you what it feels like unless you've got eyesight. If we could grade beauty according to the nature of feelings it evokes, absolute beauty would be at one end of the scale. The old saw about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, in my opinion, refers to the ability of the beholder to distinguish true beauty rather than to their views on beauty — if the eye can’t behold there’s no beauty in it.

There's no doubt at all that a person with trained ear and certain cultural level would have stopped to appreciate the outstanding quality of Joshua Bell's (yes, it was him) performance in any environment, at any hour, in any context, however fast his/her pace of life may be and whatever pressure their hectic, busy and tight schedule may put on him/her, even despite him/herself simply because he/she would be able to distinguish a great performer and a superb instrument from an ordinary musician and a cheap assembly line fiddle.


The violin in question, made by one of the greatest 18th century Italian craftsmen, Antonio Stradivari, is worth 3.5 million not because it's old, but, among other things, because of the unsurpassed quality of its sound, created by the richest possible palette of harmonics and overtones, and how far the instrument can project it.
Then again, it takes a finely tuned ear to notice that.

Harmonics and overtones are produced by the vibration of parts of a string (partial frequencies) that together with the string’s full length oscillation (fundamental frequency) are perceived by the human ear as the timbre of the tone, the quality of which almost entirely depends on the wood the violin is made of, the varnish that coats it’s outside surface and the luthier’s skill. The chemical composition of the varnish and the fashioning of the violins were analysed, and the dimensions were copied to a thousandth of an inch precision, yet the secret of their tone remains unlocked. It’s in tomb with their makers.

Most genres of modern music are nothing more than organized noise, that is, cacophony — commercial products record companies and all sorts of shameless small time “artists” called music and forced on the increasingly uncultured public so that they rake in the millions. Prolonged exposure to such products, especially from an early age, dulls the senses and perception, so that most people aren’t able to recognize true beauty any more.

Granted, there's a lot of trash in classical music too, as well as mediocre performers, and in such cases a piece of good modern music is indeed much easier on the ear.

The fact that all Joshua Bell’s performances are sell-outs doesn’t mean the audience is made up of refined art connoisseurs. Actually, the best seats at concerts are hardly ever occupied by true music lovers, many of them can't even afford to buy the tickets. The great majority of people who buy tickets for his concerts do it either for show — frequenting such events is seen as a sign of good taste, or to keep up with their arty-farty friends, or to feel they belong to the elite of the society. Joshua Bell is a world renowned violinist and therefore a crowd-puller (not in the least measure thanks to marketing), naturally enough, the posh are just eager to pass themselves off as being in the know and flaunt their class.

On the other hand, there are many unrecognized talented artists that simply didn't have the luck to bump into an equally perceptive person.
Another factor to take into consideration is that most people have no criteria of their own for measuring the quality of a piece of art or an artist's performance, so they just jump on the bandwagon.
Otherwise who in their right mind would perform or "listen" to 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence and call it music, or gape at white panels on a white wall and call it painting?
Like in H. C. Andersen's fairy tale 'the king is naked!'

Beauty is a universal truth. It’s an objective reality — just because some people can’t perceive it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Unless, of course, we start a debate on quantum interpretation of reality and ponder about profound questions such as ‘Does the Moon exist when nobody is looking at it?’ Well, some people argue that perception of beauty is a matter of taste — and there is no accounting for taste, which I read as ‘what I don’t understand I don’t like’. Most people stick to taste factor so as not to be branded as lowbrow. Actually, what accounts for taste is the individual’s intellect. It takes guts to face the truth.

It's sad that nowadays people are brainwashed by junk food, junk culture and consumer goods into being afraid to get sacked if they stop to listen to the music of one of the greatest composers of all times, or into buying things they don't need and selling their souls for things they do need. And it's tragic that in our society getting to work on time so as not to lose a job is more important than listening to a piece of sublime music performed by one of the greatest living musicians.
Wasn't progress supposed to make our lives happier and more comfortable?
With such prosaic mindset, why would parents try to instil good taste into their children?

No wonder modern society doesn't actually need highbrow art.
Besides, we are too busy for everything that really matters.

I wonder what the result would be, if the same experiment were carried out in Europe, especially in Italy. Probably more people would squeeze the virtuoso’s performance into their busy schedule, since Europe has much richer and longer cultural traditions than the US.

Curiously, in the past it was allegedly far more difficult to provide food and shelter for the family, workers had fewer rights and there were no modern comforts, still true art prospered — probably because even a person without a fancy music education was able to recognize it. It seems, for some reason, material wealth and technological advances are proportionate to spiritual poverty.

However, the status quo is convenient for the ruling class — ignorant slaves are easier to rule.

They say humanity is progressing — but just because we’re moving forward doesn’t mean we’re going to a better place.

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Should a girl stand her boyfriend swearing at her?

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Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty, and I'll show you a man.
..............................................................Erica Jong

Tables turned

D. has been in a five-year relationship with her boyfriend, but in spite of apparently loving each other and living together things don’t work well. It seems it’s all due to his quick temper, which usually translates into him yelling at the top of his lungs and swearing at her without any good reason at all.

She tried counselling, serious talking and even breaking up with him, but none of these experiments helped. He keeps cutting up rough, if she doesn’t approach him carefully -- like when she puts him off playing video games. She’s reluctant to give up on this relationship yet, but can’t take it any longer, either, since it’s also aggravating her underlying depression. So what should she do?

I've seen a lot of similar cases (like a couple who broke up because he just wouldn't come unstuck from his video games), and it's all usually comes down to lack of respect.
First of all, everyone gets as much respect as they demand. However much you love him, letting him yell at you means you don't respect yourself enough, but there's really no reason for that – convince yourself you don't deserve it.

The problem is that he takes you for granted, he isn't afraid to lose you, because you always forgive him and come back.

Try doing the following exercise: close your eyes and imagine your life without him, every working day — every weekend etc without him — and if it doesn't hurt, it would probably be a good idea to move on.

If you still don't want to split up with him, make him see you can give as good as you get, and, most importantly, make yourself less available. If a man snaps and cusses at you, he most likely considers you to be nothing more than an additional tool in the loo.

Here are some steps you could take to fight your way out of the swamp.

Put on your glad rags and start going out with your friends more often;
IGNORE him the way he does you;
and concentrate on your interests and hobbies exactly the way he does on his games
(I'm sure you have a lot of interests and can pick one to focus on).

If all this doesn't help, he doesn’t love you and you are most certainly wasting your time!
Anyway, be careful with yelling, eventually it might grow into physical abuse.

However, there's also another line to take into account: what really makes him yell? what makes him so angry?
Is there any underlying problem eating away at him, such as some inferiority complex (it's very common for such men to mistreat women), frustration etc? It could even be due to some kind of medical condition.
Probably he's crying out for help too.
Think about it.

After all, where there's love there's a way.

What is the Meaning and Purpose of Life?

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
(W.Shakespeare, 'Macbeth'. Act v, scene 5)

Impossible to express better the everlasting human grieve.

Many people pose this eternal and probably the first and most transcendental question that humans asked themselves as self-aware beings. It hurts to think that our life has no meaning or purpose at all, so we desperately try to at least build up an illusion.
I feel honoured to be asked such a profound question, and I decided to write my view on it not because I think I have the right answer, but because I’ve been musing about it for as long as I can remember. Here is the way I see it.

First and foremost, there’s no universal answer or single purpose that would suit everyone, but rather each to their own.
The purpose of our life is, in part, defined, among other things, by our intellect. So each life has its unique purpose.

The most primitive meaning and purpose life can have are those of animals (well, inanimate things and any matter in general also have purpose, but that’s their problem).

Their main aim in life is to survive and keep existing. Therefore the only thing they have to worry about is to satisfy their needs, that is, to feed (which includes the disposal of resulting waste), mate/reproduce, sleep and escape from predators.

Most people follow the same pattern, just instead of wilderness we are in the middle of a concrete-metal-glass jungle, surrounded by sophisticated toys, such as cars, mobile phones, computers etc, and use TOOLS to do basically the same things (eat, sleep, mate, escape from predators).
Mind that animals can do without us, but we can’t without them (although we aren't fully aware of the fact).
Animals are key to the natural balance of this planet’s ecosystems, apart from greatly contributing to its beauty, therefore their existence is the fulfilment of their purpose.

As for the humans, we are supposed to do something more than that, otherwise there would be absolutely no need to possess a conscious intellect. Could you think of any reason why God or who/whatever created us would go to the trouble of bringing into existence such a destructive, harmful and deficient species, when both the universe and this planet get along very well without any intelligent life at all, if it weren't for some higher purpose? Let me know if you can.

Some say we are here to provide a spectacle for God (and we do indeed make a spectacle of ourselves).
Well, others say it’s all due to a blind chance (the Big Bang? But who blew it up?), but I think any blind chance has a sighted drive — a sophisticated invisible "guidance system". After all, chance is an unconscious necessity, probably determined by the circumstances and the way we are.

It all depends on the angle you look at the issue from. You just have to choose the purpose that most suits you.

The highest purpose and meaning a life can have is artistic creation. Lives of great artists were full of elevated meaning, since they imitated, though obviously on a smaller scale, the Maker’s activity. The principal difference, in my humble opinion, between humans and animals lies in the attempts to understand the world around us and the ability to create, not only tools, as some animals can do that too, but art (however, modern art definitely blurs the distinction between animal and human creations).

This doesn’t mean that our mere mortals’ lives have no purpose.
When I was a child I imagined this life as a school where we had to get directions to a mountain only from the peak of which the true purpose of our lives could be seen or revealed, and logically enough only the best students would manage to climb it, but it could take more than one life to get to the mountain. While we are in the valley or at the foot of the mountain we can’t see what’s behind it – that is, the purpose of our existence.
Well, such was my childish take on the issue. Now I go by a much simpler and more succinct rule:
‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. ‘
Robert Louis Stevenson

So the best thing those of us who aren’t endowed with great (I mean GREAT, not rentable) talents can do is to try to develop whatever skills we possess to the best of our abilities, or at least acquire some.

‘Happiness consists in exercising without hindrance one’s abilities, whatever they may be.’
Aristotle.

For religious (either lapsed or practising) people the supreme purpose of life is to seek God.
All these different paths lead to the same end -- personal development and the joy of learning something new up until your death.

There’s yet another universal meaning of life – to love, feel the sea breeze, listen to birdsongs, to go to beautiful places, to build your home, to run across the poppy field, to sail etc, etc, etc and, most importantly, to put passion into whatever you do — in other words, to have fun!

There’s also a difference between objective and subjective meaning/purpose of life – what it’s for you and what it’s for others or the universe.
In some circumstances life doesn’t seem to make any sense (for instance, diseases); in such cases it depends entirely on his/her courage, aspirations and ability to find something enjoyable that would take them out of themselves and keep their mind off the pain.

These are cases when one person’s life has a meaning as long as it serves or helps someone else – I would call this objective purpose (along the lines of: the whole humanity probably exists as a background for the realisation of a few great persons and enjoyment of the rich), while it’s really hard to find any subjective meaning of the life of someone in an irreversible coma and the like. Death isn’t always the worst thing.

To sum up: be happy while you have a chance to find a subjective purpose of your life, make the most of every minute as much as you can and have fun without harming other people or the environment — however long it may last, life's too short.

But those who cherish ambitions of reaching the top notch of the scale could adopt the following quote as their motto:

'The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.'

Socrates

Whatever you put love into is the purpose of your life.

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Should parents allow their daughters to be vaccinated against cervical cancer?

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In my opinion, the following questions should cross any thinking person's mind regarding this matter.

First of all, why is it only girls who get the jab? It's men who transmit this virus, so boys should be vaccinated first. Following the same line of reasoning, men should take the pill, which causes a lot of side effects, including breast cancer, instead of women, but since the world is ruled by men women's lives are not so appreciated as men's.

The fact that most scientists who develop these vaccines, pills etc are men is a telling detail, no wonder they gladly sacrifice women's health for their benefit and pleasure.

Many if not all these infections could have been avoided, if men's and boy's foreskins were cut off. Sadly, men have never respected women much enough to care about their health, and most women have too low self-esteem to demand respect.
Probably, it's also a way of reducing female population as there are more women than men in the world.

There's no scientific proof whatsoever that this vaccine works or doesn't cause long-term side effects -- it has never been used before, at least not exactly this formula. Then again, who cares? The industry is raking in.

By the way, where did this virus originally come from? Our grandparents never heard of cervical cancer, let alone papilloma, salmonella, swine flu etc. What animal are they going to blame it on this time?

Another question is why it's taken for granted that children should start their sex life at the age of 12 or 13. What if some of them are going to wait until they are 17? Why not give them the shot then?

Wouldn't it make more sense for so-called civilised species to instil some morality into their youth instead of encouraging depravity and then stuffing the children with chemicals to fight against its consequences (actually that's how modern medicine works -- to treat symptoms, rather than causes)?

What about those 30% of cervical cancer types that this vaccine doesn’t protect from? So how many vaccinated women will get both the cancer and vaccine side effects?
Does the vaccine provide a lifelong protection and if it doesn't, how many shots will women need during their lives? Wouldn't it interact with other vaccines, like swine flu jab?

How many vaccines can a human body take?

Those who say the right thing to do is to balance the benefit for the many against the suffering (or “a small risk”) of the few should imagine themselves and the members of their family among those few and figure out if the benefit of the many would be then much consolation to them (granted, I wouldn't rule out a few fanatical martyrs or fools playing selfless heroes).

What surprises me most is how light-heartedly parents let use their daughters as guinea pigs.
It looks like lately, health care workers are on a vaccinating spree!

Well, this world is getting more and more insane every day: scientists (who should first test their stuff on themselves and the big pharma CEOs) have taken a permanent leave of common sense, and people turned into herd animals, bleating at the whim of their master.

I wonder if the presidents’ daughters and the likes are going to be vaccinated.
We'll never know the truth, though.