ON THE SUBJECT OF TIME... By Joseph Raglione.

 Time in and of itself does not exist except as changing energy. The Big Bang theory claims the Universe started from nothing with a tremendous explosion. We can only ask what fueled the explosion in the first place and how did that fuel come into existence?
                                             
 The concept of eternal energy terrifies the human mind and we humans have created Gods in order to sooth our fear of change from the conscious state of mind to the inanimate unconscious state of existence within eternal energy. The idea that a God created all things leads to the question of where did God come from?

 When humans began to very slowly discover repetitive constants within nature, our species created a tool called 'Science' to classify and keep track of what we discovered.  With Science, our Homo Sapient species jumped far ahead of all the other Species surviving on Earth and science today uses a great amount of experimenting and a great amount of measuring to understand what exists within the Universe.

Happily for us we now have lightning-fast computers to help us speed up the process of discovery but even so, one of the oldest inventions on Earth, the Clock, continues to be one of our most important tools. For example: when we measure the speed of changing energy we use a precise invention called an Atomic Clock to measure and compare the change. In other words we link our culturally created Time-Clock concepts we call: seconds, minutes, days and years to changing energy in order to measure energy speeds.
All energy (including Life energy) will change form within the universe and the speed of those changes we measure with our Time-Clocks.

 We use our Clocks to discover how quickly or slowly energy changes around us in comparison to our interior energy. Some scientists we call Doctors closely monitor the changes within their patients in order to keep them alive as long as possible. Many research scientists are dedicated  to understanding the chemical compositions and interactions which are required for the existence of Biological life on Earth.

 Clocks themselves are transformed from one form of energy to another and we humans have discovered ways to combine Atoms and Molecules into new and different forms not found in nature. The problem with these new discoveries is that we have created a social economy based almost totally on the time consuming production of new products. This industrially generated fast production of products is quickly and dangerously replacing and destroying the delicate life sustaining balance-of-Nature. The joke is that these inventions have been labelled energy saving  devices!
Nature is much slower at creating and preserving life on Earth while artificial processes often pollute and destroy nature at a very fast pace! They are not saving energy but shaping it into forms that are dangerous to life on Earth!

 We are literally changing the natural energy systems keeping us alive!
 The world wide production and use of tools and products is creating an artificial economic culture sadly not based on Nature! We are now using time-clocks and fast computers to run our lives! The operating word being run!

 Humans need to live at the pace of Nature and not work industrially to destroy Nature!
Energy constantly changes. The conundrum is this: logic forces us to believe energy is eternal within the Universe and cannot be created or destroyed. Our Time-Clock invention, therefore, is only useful as a human measure of all changing Energy and both the clock and the energy it measures are eternal. They will change form but will never disappear! Time is our human cultural name and measure for changing energy speed and since Energy is eternal so is Time. In fact the words 'changing energy' should replace the word Time.

 Energy can certainly be manipulated and changed and diverted into different forms and unhappily for life on Earth, we humans have and are creating too many energy changes!
Energy does not care if it is animate or inanimate and we humans can by destructive neglect, change ourselves back to inanimate energy in the blink of an eye!

 There is some positive changes happening, however, which may keep our species alive on this little Blue planet. Electric cars are now on the market at reasonable prices and people are finally awakening to the reality of global warming and the fact we need more protection for Nature's life sustaining systems. We need more Trees planted everywhere on Earth and we need to slow our Human population growth. We need millions more home vegetable gardens and non polluting energy systems. These energy changes are positive and life sustaining but slow and fragile. Nature is in a global war with humans who have directly opposing economic vested interests! These ignorant humans are tragically opposed to life sustaining energy systems!

If we wish to sustain life on our small Blue Planet Earth, we have to make some fast non-polluting Energy changes.

Thanks for reading!
Signed: Joseph Raglione.
Executive director: The World Friendly Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement.
Please feel free to copy and pass on this message because Time is limited for life on Earth.
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ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet of France Discusses the Environment with French Students | International Space Station | March 20, 2017: Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 50 Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency discussed life and research aboard the orbital laboratory and his view of the Earth from orbit during an in-flight question and answer session March 20 with students gathered in France to recognize “World Water Day”. Pesquet is in the midst of a six and a half month mission on the station.

https://youtu.be/tjxRGQ2kSf8

Now laugh till it hurts with Victor Borge!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMKIE8vjBQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMKIE8vjBQI

I have had enough! I am fighting back against vested interests and the giant oil companies who are attempting to dominate the economy of the United States and of Canada and of the world!


This is a drive for investment funding. There is a new and powerful solid state Glass Battery ready to replace the Lithium Ion battery and I am asking for investment capital to get in on the ground floor! The same inventor of the Lithium Ion Battery, John B. Goodenough,  has invented a better long lasting Battery and the time to invest is now!
http:// human4usbillions@gmail.com

OUR STORIES › NORTHEAST DISPATCH

Small Towns Fight Big Oil on the Hudson

New Yorkers are resisting efforts to sextuple the number of anchorage grounds in the river and transform their backyard into a parking lot for oil barges.

March 06, 2017 Jenny Shalant

This article was originally published on NRDC.org.

Last fall, a whale made a go of Manhattan. The humpback, eventually named Gotham, chased schools of herring from New York Bay into the Hudson River, as delighted onlookers snapped photos of its tail flukes framed by the city skyline. For a couple of weeks, the whale rose to social media stardom; it even started tweeting.

Wildlife experts say both the whale and its abundant prey testify to the improving water quality of the Hudson, which is a federally designated American Heritage River as well as one of the largest Superfund sites in the United States. The river has come a long way since General Electric and other companies dumped toxic waste into its channel, but new threats may be on the horizon. The U.S. Coast Guard is considering a proposal to allow the construction of 10 anchorage grounds for massive oil barges (currently there are two). If approved, an influx of tankers up to 600 feet long would be able to dock in riverside communities between the George Washington Bridge and the Port of Albany.

Fossil fuel companies hope to take advantage of a recently lifted ban on crude oil exports by making the river a conduit to ports overseas. Meanwhile, environmental advocates fear the recovering river — a resource for wildlife, recreation, and drinking water — will once again be steeped in industry.

Proposed oil barge anchorages for the Hudson River between Yonkers and Kingston-Rhinecliff, New York. Courtesy: Hudson River Trustee Council

The anchorage proposal submitted last year by the Maritime Association of the Port of NY/NJ, which represents oil and shipping interests, threatens to transform more than 2,400 acres of the waterway. In the south, the 43 new berths would extend down to Yonkers — a city in the midst of revitalizing its blighted industrial waterfront. On the northern end, the barges would dock in Kingston, which fronts one of the river’s only public swimming beaches. All but one of the berths would allow for long-term anchorage, which would essentially convert the Hudson into a parking garage for crude oil.

During the comment period that ended in December, more than 10,000 people voiced their objections. Some opponents, like Mark Chertok, an environmental lawyer who represents the Hudson River Waterfront Alliance, pointed to the industry’s practice of stockpiling oil on barges — as it does in the Gulf of Mexico — until higher market prices make it advantageous to unload its cargo. “This use of the river for arbitrage purposes would be an abuse of federal navigational authority,” wrote Chertok. The project, he said, would enable “an invaluable public resource to be converted into free warehousing for private commercial benefit.”

Sending more crude down the Hudson would also make old problems even worse, because much of the cargo may not be just any oil, but tar sands oil. Once stripped out of Canada’s boreal forest, this volatile fossil fuel is transported by pipeline or train, then refined in a highly carbon-intensive process. Global Partners LP has applied for a permit to add new equipment to its storage facility at the Hudson port of Albany for the processing of tar sands oil. The company’s refinery sits right beside the Ezra Prentice Homes, a low-income housing development.

Oil barge on the Hudson, 2016. Courtesy: Carolyn Blackwood

“It’s a classic example of a polluting facility being sited directly adjacent to a low-income community of color,” says Rob Friedman, a campaigner on NRDC’s environmental justice team. “Public housing is often built on the cheapest land in a community, and here you have people breathing in toxic fumes every single day, next to a facility that has already been shown to be violating the Clean Air Act.”

NRDC is currently suing Global Partners and challenging its permit as part of a clean air case represented by Earthjustice. The lawsuit asks the court to force Global to apply for a new air pollution permit and prohibit the Albany facility from handling Bakken crude oil.

“It’s amazing to have communities up and down the river in a state of resistance saying we’re not going to stand for this,” Friedman says. Beyond worries about how the barges will affect the look and feel of the river, it’s the prospect of an oil spill that has many local citizens taking action.

Communities have ample right to be concerned. When a crude oil barge collided with a towboat on the Mississippi River in February 2014, responders were able to recover only a tiny fraction of the spilled fuel — just 95 of about 30,000 gallons. And tar sands crude is particularly disastrous for river ecosystems, explains NRDC staff attorney Kimberly Ong. “This oil immediately sinks to the bottom, and there is, to date, no known way of effectively cleaning it up.” (Just ask the residents of Kalamazoo, Michigan.)

Oil spill on the Mississippi River, 2014. Coast Guard Photo

“The Hudson is extremely turbid, so it’s silty and there are a lot of suspended sediments in the water,” adds Friedman, who once worked on the river conducting water sampling tests for Riverkeeper. “If there were to be a spill of crude oil in the river, it’s likely that a very small percentage would be recovered based on its turbidity and the fact that the Hudson is a tidal estuary,” he says. “It’s changing directions constantly.”

In September, Riverkeeper’s boat captain, John Lipscomb, gave a town hall presentation in Rhinebeck, New York. He discussed the deadly “bomb train” derailment in the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic in 2013. In addition to killing 47 people, the accident sent 26,000 gallons of crude into the Chaudière River. In the year that followed the spill, government-commissioned biologists found unprecedented levels (up to 47 percent) of deformities in many of the river’s fish species. Lipscomb, who has spent the past 17 years on the Hudson conducting pollution patrols and scientific studies, fears that lessons from the Chaudière are going ignored.

“Here we have endangered species that we’ve prioritized for recovery in the Hudson,” Lipscomb said, referring to species like Atlantic sturgeon and bog turtles. “And we’re running a product that if spilled can’t be collected and has proven to cause problems for wildlife in the river.” These incidents are also a toxic threat to the surrounding communities, he points out—and not just to the people who fish on the river. “The 40 percent of it that flashes off into fumes, if it happens in your community, is mutagenic and carcinogenic.” (While few studies have examined the long-term impacts of oil spills on human health, many Gulf Coast residents were still suffering from respiratory and cardiovascular problems, memory loss, and other degenerative issues five years after BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill.)

In light of New York’s clean energy priorities, plus those 10,000 public comments and the pressure from organizations like NRDC, Riverkeeper, and Earthjustice, Friedman remains hopeful that the new anchorages will be scrapped.

Protest in Albany, NY against Bakken crude oil coming into the Port of Albany. Pilot Girl/Flickr

Hudson Valley residents will need to keep this pressure up to protect the waterway in their backyards, but this is not just a local fight. By blocking the expansion of the tar sands industry, they’re going to bat for all of us — from Alberta’s First Nations, whose lands have been poisoned by the open-pit mining of this toxic fuel, to upstate New York  residents breathing fumes from refineries next door, to the countries trying to curb carbon emissions instead of unleash them, and finally, to the odd whale that chases its dinner up a welcoming river.

A flower for all of you on Google+

How to defeat intolerance and hate and anger. A TED talk.

15:17

Megan Phelps-Roper

I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's why I left

Posted Mar 2017Rated Courageous, Inspiring!

I was a blue-eyed, chubby-cheeked five-year-old when I joined my family on the picket line for the first time. My mom made me leave my dolls in the minivan. I'd stand on a street corner in the heavy Kansas humidity, surrounded by a few dozen relatives, with my tiny fists clutching a sign that I couldn't read yet: "Gays are worthy of death." This was the beginning.

0:36Our protests soon became a daily occurrence and an international phenomenon, and as a member of Westboro Baptist Church, I became a fixture on picket lines across the country. The end of my antigay picketing career and life as I knew it, came 20 years later, triggered in part by strangers on Twitter who showed me the power of engaging the other.

0:58In my home, life was framed as an epic spiritual battle between good and evil. The good was my church and its members, and the evil was everyone else. My church's antics were such that we were constantly at odds with the world, and that reinforced our otherness on a daily basis. "Make a difference between the unclean and the clean,"the verse says, and so we did. From baseball games to military funerals, we trekked across the country with neon protest signs in hand to tell others exactly how "unclean" they were and exactly why they were headed for damnation. This was the focus of our whole lives. This was the only way for me to do good in a world that sits in Satan's lap. And like the rest of my 10 siblings, I believed what I was taught with all my heart, and I pursued Westboro's agenda with a special sort of zeal.

1:51In 2009, that zeal brought me to Twitter. Initially, the people I encountered on the platform were just as hostile as I expected. They were the digital version of the screaming hordes I'd been seeing at protests since I was a kid. But in the midst of that digital brawl, a strange pattern developed. Someone would arrive at my profile with the usual rage and scorn, I would respond with a custom mix of Bible verses, pop culture references and smiley faces. They would be understandably confused and caught off guard, but then a conversation would ensue. And it was civil — full of genuine curiosity on both sides. How had the other come to such outrageous conclusions about the world?

2:36Sometimes the conversation even bled into real life. People I'd sparred with on Twitter would come out to the picket line to see me when I protested in their city. A man named David was one such person. He ran a blog called "Jewlicious," and after several months of heated but friendly arguments online, he came out to see me at a picket in New Orleans. He brought me a Middle Eastern dessert from Jerusalem, where he lives, and I brought him kosher chocolate and held a "God hates Jews" sign.

3:05(Laughter)

3:08There was no confusion about our positions, but the line between friend and foe was becoming blurred. We'd started to see each other as human beings, and it changed the way we spoke to one another.

3:19It took time, but eventually these conversations planted seeds of doubt in me. My friends on Twitter took the time to understand Westboro's doctrines, and in doing so, they were able to find inconsistencies I'd missed my entire life.Why did we advocate the death penalty for gays when Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"How could we claim to love our neighbor while at the same time praying for God to destroy them? The truth is that the care shown to me by these strangers on the internet was itself a contradiction. It was growing evidence that people on the other side were not the demons I'd been led to believe.

3:59These realizations were life-altering. Once I saw that we were not the ultimate arbiters of divine truth but flawed human beings, I couldn't pretend otherwise. I couldn't justify our actions — especially our cruel practice of protesting funerals and celebrating human tragedy. These shifts in my perspective contributed to a larger erosion of trust in my church, and eventually it made it impossible for me to stay.

4:27In spite of overwhelming grief and terror, I left Westboro in 2012. In those days just after I left, the instinct to hide was almost paralyzing. I wanted to hide from the judgement of my family, who I knew would never speak to me again —people whose thoughts and opinions had meant everything to me. And I wanted to hide from the world I'd rejected for so long — people who had no reason at all to give me a second chance after a lifetime of antagonism. And yet, unbelievably, they did.

4:59The world had access to my past because it was all over the internet — thousands of tweets and hundreds of interviews, everything from local TV news to "The Howard Stern Show" — but so many embraced me with open arms anyway. I wrote an apology for the harm I'd caused, but I also knew that an apology could never undo any of it.All I could do was try to build a new life and find a way somehow to repair some of the damage. People had every reason to doubt my sincerity, but most of them didn't. And — given my history, it was more than I could've hoped for — forgiveness and the benefit of the doubt. It still amazes me.

5:39I spent my first year away from home adrift with my younger sister, who had chosen to leave with me. We walked into an abyss, but we were shocked to find the light and a way forward in the same communities we'd targeted for so long. David, my "Jewlicious" friend from Twitter, invited us to spend time among a Jewish community in Los Angeles.We slept on couches in the home of a Hasidic rabbi and his wife and their four kids — the same rabbi that I'd protested three years earlier with a sign that said, "Your rabbi is a whore." We spent long hours talking about theology and Judaism and life while we washed dishes in their kosher kitchen and chopped vegetables for dinner.They treated us like family. They held nothing against us, and again I was astonished.

6:31That period was full of turmoil, but one part I've returned to often is a surprising realization I had during that time —that it was a relief and a privilege to let go of the harsh judgments that instinctively ran through my mind about nearly every person I saw. I realized that now I needed to learn. I needed to listen.

6:54This has been at the front of my mind lately, because I can't help but see in our public discourse so many of the same destructive impulses that ruled my former church. We celebrate tolerance and diversity more than at any other time in memory, and still we grow more and more divided. We want good things — justice, equality, freedom, dignity, prosperity — but the path we've chosen looks so much like the one I walked away from four years ago. We've broken the world into us and them, only emerging from our bunkers long enough to lob rhetorical grenades at the other camp. We write off half the country as out-of-touch liberal elites or racist misogynist bullies. No nuance, no complexity, no humanity. Even when someone does call for empathy and understanding for the other side, the conversation nearly always devolves into a debate about who deserves more empathy. And just as I learned to do,we routinely refuse to acknowledge the flaws in our positions or the merits in our opponent's. Compromise is anathema. We even target people on our own side when they dare to question the party line. This path has brought us cruel, sniping, deepening polarization, and even outbreaks of violence. I remember this path. It will not take us where we want to go.

8:18What gives me hope is that we can do something about this. The good news is that it's simple, and the bad news is that it's hard. We have to talk and listen to people we disagree with. It's hard because we often can't fathom how the other side came to their positions. It's hard because righteous indignation, that sense of certainty that ours is the right side, is so seductive. It's hard because it means extending empathy and compassion to people who show us hostility and contempt. The impulse to respond in kind is so tempting, but that isn't who we want to be. We can resist. And I will always be inspired to do so by those people I encountered on Twitter, apparent enemies who became my beloved friends. And in the case of one particularly understanding and generous guy, my husband. There was nothing special about the way I responded to him. What was special was their approach. I thought about it a lot over the past few years and I found four things they did differently that made real conversation possible. These four steps were small but powerful, and I do everything I can to employ them in difficult conversations today.

9:35The first is don't assume bad intent. My friends on Twitter realized that even when my words were aggressive and offensive, I sincerely believed I was doing the right thing. Assuming ill motives almost instantly cuts us off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do. We forget that they're a human being with a lifetime of experience that shaped their mind, and we get stuck on that first wave of anger, and the conversation has a very hard time ever moving beyond it. But when we assume good or neutral intent, we give our minds a much stronger framework for dialogue.

10:13The second is ask questions. When we engage people across ideological divides, asking questions helps us map the disconnect between our differing points of view. That's important because we can't present effective arguments if we don't understand where the other side is actually coming from and because it gives them an opportunity to point out flaws in our positions. But asking questions serves another purpose; it signals to someone that they're being heard.When my friends on Twitter stopped accusing and started asking questions, I almost automatically mirrored them.Their questions gave me room to speak, but they also gave me permission to ask them questions and to truly hear their responses. It fundamentally changed the dynamic of our conversation.

11:01The third is stay calm. This takes practice and patience, but it's powerful. At Westboro, I learned not to care how my manner of speaking affected others. I thought my rightness justified my rudeness — harsh tones, raised voices, insults, interruptions — but that strategy is ultimately counterproductive. Dialing up the volume and the snark is natural in stressful situations, but it tends to bring the conversation to an unsatisfactory, explosive end. When my husband was still just an anonymous Twitter acquaintance, our discussions frequently became hard and pointed, but we always refused to escalate. Instead, he would change the subject. He would tell a joke or recommend a book or gently excuse himself from the conversation. We knew the discussion wasn't over, just paused for a time to bring us back to an even keel. People often lament that digital communication makes us less civil, but this is one advantage that online conversations have over in-person ones. We have a buffer of time and space between us and the people whose ideas we find so frustrating. We can use that buffer. Instead of lashing out, we can pause, breathe, change the subject or walk away, and then come back to it when we're ready.

12:21And finally ... make the argument. This might seem obvious, but one side effect of having strong beliefs is that we sometimes assume that the value of our position is or should be obvious and self-evident, that we shouldn't have to defend our positions because they're so clearly right and good that if someone doesn't get it, it's their problem — that it's not my job to educate them. But if it were that simple, we would all see things the same way. As kind as my friends on Twitter were, if they hadn't actually made their arguments, it would've been so much harder for me to see the world in a different way. We are all a product of our upbringing, and our beliefs reflect our experiences. We can't expect others to spontaneously change their own minds. If we want change, we have to make the case for it.

13:16My friends on Twitter didn't abandon their beliefs or their principles — only their scorn. They channeled their infinitely justifiable offense and came to me with pointed questions tempered with kindness and humor. They approached me as a human being, and that was more transformative than two full decades of outrage, disdain and violence. I know that some might not have the time or the energy or the patience for extensive engagement, but as difficult as it can be, reaching out to someone we disagree with is an option that is available to all of us. And I sincerely believe that we can do hard things, not just for them but for us and our future. Escalating disgust and intractable conflict are not what we want for ourselves, or our country or our next generation.

14:08My mom said something to me a few weeks before I left Westboro, when I was desperately hoping there was a way I could stay with my family. People I have loved with every pulse of my heart since even before I was that chubby-cheeked five-year-old, standing on a picket line holding a sign I couldn't read. She said, "You're just a human being,my dear, sweet child." She was asking me to be humble — not to question but to trust God and my elders. But to me, she was missing the bigger picture — that we're all just human beings. That we should be guided by that most basic fact, and approach one another with generosity and compassion.

14:51Each one of us contributes to the communities and the cultures and the societies that we make up. The end of this spiral of rage and blame begins with one person who refuses to indulge these destructive, seductive impulses. We just have to decide that it's going to start with us.

15:09Thank you.

15:11(Applause)