gagablog 72: Gaga on Dave, (and Stephen Colbert going Public)

I've wanted to mention Dave Letterman retiring and Stephen Colbert taking over the Late Show but could not connect it to Gaga to justify writing it here, but she performed for Dave, Bill Murray and the Late Show audience last night and the theme of it magically connects, and follows up on the last gagablog about favoritism versus inclusion. (By the time I returned to finish this 17 hours later I've learned it was a rerun, but I had never heard of this episode and even this fits my current theme of being out of the loop with Gaga and trying to catch up to the present/future) When Gaga came out she did something no guest has ever done before, I bet. She invited the whole crowd to come across the street to the Roseland where she would be performing that night and played a mini-show for them. It was just awesome - I was hoping for an interview since there was time left in the show but this was the only thing that could be better, a surprise performance of "Dope" AND "G.U.Y" and it was amazing. This is inclusion, radical inclusion, and this is how it works, how we will save the world. I'm sure there were some little monsters in the Ed Sullivan Theater yesterday, it looked like an "average" audience for Dave, but I imagine by the time they finished at the Roseland there were many more monsters in the crowd. Giving something away for free is an important theme - most simply, money only divides us. The new model, the new "economy" of unity and inclusion will be Oz-like: we will work for pleasure, to please ourselves and others. That's all the motivation we really need, especially as technology makes more and more things easier. You can see Gaga for free on videos on the internet, if you have a connection, which should also be a universal right. But this was very special, inviting the whole crowd to a free show - like Jesus feeding the multitudes, and teaching us how to do it, how to overcome money. It's not just about overcoming money, making things free and liberating people, it is specifically about inclusion. It's the idea that everyone is "our" people, all the different "kinds" and groups of people don't matter. This is an echo of something that always stuck with me, from a Jerry Garcia interview in 1965 or '66 (that I first heard in '00). The kid asks him "what about these kids coming down to the Fillmore to the shows - are they real hippies or....?" and Jerry says "well the important thing is that they are real people." The kid follows up with "What do you mean "real people', like, not phonies?" and Jerry says "no, I mean all people are real people." People have this tendency to want to categorize everything, including each other. Some people don't like the term "deadhead" or "hippie" but I have always been very proud to be one, focusing not on it making me "different" but on how these identities connect me even more with the world, because of the philosophies behind them. I would not say the same thing about the identity of being "rich", for instance: even though it certainly can be more potential to connect with people, the trend has been for people to use wealth to isolate themselves. Not hippies - even if you aren't a hippie (yet), hippies will welcome you. It's kind of something you can grow into - it's very natural. And I'm so pleased whenever Gaga refers to the monsters camping out to see her as "hippies" - it is the same thing, something to be proud of. There are so many different kinds of hippies and hippie/liberal ideals have thankfully spread into most sectors of society. And of course even some people who identify as hippies, or who could if they weren't resistant to negative implications of the term, are snobby or more hipster than hippie, in other words exclusionary, but these are more like exeptions/anomalies in hippie cultures. They see themselves as special. And that's great because the great thing about any artistic (hippie) culture, that makes them so counter-cultural, is valuing people and relationships over money and status, the "mainstream" concerns. This reminds people how special they are and builds a community aorund this basic value of people. But the special-ness should be extended to other people who aren't in the "group", everybody else is still a hippie-in-training and some people are naturally good at it. It's the same analogy for magic: all people are magical and can be even more so, entering the magical community, and some people have more noticeable magic to show the way. With all the variety of people who can be called "hippies" probably the best defining characteristic is "loving people." What's wrong with that? So this is all about acceptance, especially of "strangers". (As I edited this "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" was on because I don't have my remote and they kept yelling about/at hippies...) I went to my neighbors Seder service the other night and had only been to one before, when I was a kid. I was impressed by the emphasis on taking care of the needy, the stranger and the orphan. To me this is the central message of all religions, it comes across in so many forms, and yet we still have issues with living this way. They had a ritual where I was Pharoah and all the kids threw things at me to represent the plagues and my perspective was that it was a magical ritual to purge me, and the world, of these forces. My babymama has been doing a circle-casting around the whole world and when she told me about it I really gained perspective. I always look at "small" and "big" magic, events in personal life compared to news events around the world. But compared to a Golden Sphere around the whole world, expelling all negativity and sealing it with goodness, compared to that all other spells are "small" and it helps the magic be more subtle and powerful. It conjurs up the name "reciprocity" for me, the idea that magic done to effect the world will also have a component in your own life - most people use rituals and spells but I kind of intend personal/worldwide transformations to co-incide. I plan to magically destroy the cigarrette/drug company/military/economic complex by quitting smoking cigarrettes, for example. I'm not using their continued existance to excuse my habit, but I'm really feeling ready and if the system does not crumble the day I quit, I will not lose faith but know that the magic has started and that it will crumble and continuing to avoid cigarettes will be how I show my faith. I already feel, and have felt for the past few days, that this giant Ball of Progress we have all been pushing against is finally moving, and it is so huge that now that it has budged it is starting to roll and carry us along with the momentum. I don't feel like my role is over, not by a long shot, but I feel rewarded that this push to the future I have advocated for decades seems to really be underway, I can just feel it. And now that I think about it for this blog there are some interesting reflections between my small life and the larger world-life around me. This book I've been composing in my head for years is all about everything coming together, how the digital world is kind of a map/key/clue to it, but it is really a total coming-together, catching our meager reality up to the possibilities the digital world presents and gaining, not losing, greater appreciation and involvement with the environment around us, both natural and emotioanl/social. The irony of the internet and social media is the possibility of connecting with so many people, being connected in various ways to many people, having the time to spend on social media and still feeling lonely or not really fulfilled by the interactions. I don't blame the medium of the internet because so many relationships start that way and it is a great way to communicate. The irony to me is that we make so much time for it, showing such a great need for relating with people, but we don't really honor that need: the whole framework of social media is restricted by current ideas of society but as it evolves so will our expectations of socializing. It's a leap-frog effect for advancing society: social media and media in general is way behind the most progressive mentalities but as they improve and progress even the most regressive mentalities will catch up. A good example of this is how Facebook recently expanded it's gender options to include pansexual, etc. People have been using these terms for years and some of them are probably like "finally!" that can represent themselves even better, while many others never heard the terms before but have now thanks to social media and even the news story about the change. As I was finishing and editing this a stand-up comedian on Craig Ferguson was joking about how everywhere he goes people ask the same questions: "are people the same everywhere?". His answer was no, in some places the people are worse than others - a sociology degree in 5 seconds, he said. It's funny and even true in a way, I know it's not just coincidence that racism bubbles up in remote communities and gentrified cities where people don't have exposure to "other kinds" of people. People are influenced by their environment and there are certainly better places to live than others - I'm lucky/magical enough to live in the emerging paradise of Denver, which I see as the Emerald City of the coming Oz. And I came here from my hometown, where I've spent most of my life, the musical and artistic heaven of Athens, GA. But some people aren't from such fabulous places or aren't into what makes them so great. It's not like everyone has to move here, we have to expose them to the wonders of our example so they can live up to their potential and become more artistic and magical themselves. And of course we will do this in accord with removing economic and environmental disparity, curing all the world's ills at once. This is one meaning of "Artpop": transforming the world with Art and Populism. And everyone is capable of receiving art and love, everyone is capable of being a magical hippie, in the best meaning of those terms for them. Some people suffer from being in bad places infested with conservative, hateful and bigotted mentalities. Everyone who lives there suffers from it, and the rest of us suffer from their influence on the wider world, magically and more directly and just hearing about it or even hopefully doing something about it. The people who suffer the most in a conservative are the ones who don't fit in for whatever reason. One of the commonalities of conservatism around the world is homophobia and gay people are in every population and this is how we know naturally that these mentalities will have to change as people progress and truly honor everyone in their community. The same situation is true in any situation where the majority oppresses minortities in any way to any degree. It's all our responsibility to reach out to the 'other', the stranger. We need the feminine influence to do this, the chimpanzee versus bonobo example. Excuse me if i'm repeating this again, from NPR, but a study showed that chimpanzees, who are patriarchal and enforce social norms with violence, share their food with those closest to them instead of offering it to strange chimps. Bonobos, who are matriarchal and not violent like that, prefer to share their food with strangers - to make new friends and expand the community. This is the basic principle and how we should go about it, in my view. I've felt this way all my life: restoring the due honor to the feminine is the secret to really taking care of each other and the earth and eradicating violence and greed. There is every example of this but I have a few more magical things to mention. The comedian continued that what does unite us all was the need to connect - he made a good joke about how people want it so badly they try to connect too much and strecth things where nothing it there. It was funny but the truer truth is that every moment we try to connect wit others can be filled with possibility, and we really can all come together. The idea of the Golden Sphere around the world, casting out all the bad and sealing it with good, puts the other magic in perspective that makes it work more gracefully. First it is a model for anything else, doing the same around yourself, a situation, a city or country. But the whole world perspective makes any of these seem relatively small. I was reminded to ring this up by Gracie Allen a moment ago, laughing at someone mentioning a death. "How can you laugh at that?" they asked and she said "Oh I've found if you laugh at things like that you can really laugh at things that are funny." I realized when thinking of this that the whole idea of magic is "I can do this smallish thing, with magic, and have this larger effect" but in a way the magic is hindered by recognizing that the large situation (the Ukraine or Syria or Greed, for examples) IS "big" and powerful. The belief in magic changes the odds, but the Global Sphere idea gives another largeness, a canvass upon which all other magic is equally "just" paint. When I'm doing a spell for peace in Syria I'm also doing a spell for peace in myself - I believe in this "large within small" interconnectedness as the heart of magic, of reality itself. So in a way it is a "little" golden sphere around me and a big one around a country - and as much as I can work up my belief in magic, why it should work that time, if I retain the idea that "that" is big and "this" is small I'm hindering the possible effect. By fully giving into the idea that we really are really connected, that we can affect anything magically and therefore have a duty to try, that makes faith stronger. But it is even more helpful to have that perspective - really a recognition - that all good magic here contributes to the Golden Sphere around the world, and compared to that great work we are all doing everything else is small. I've had a little reciporcity from a recent spell I've been working on. For years I've been wanting to add a Grateful Dead song to my youtube spell catalog, and one of my top choices was "High Time." I got an email from a contest to cover dead songs and took it as a cue to finally do it. After recording it I realized the way it is echoed in "Dope" - and I've had it on my mind for years before that song was written. I did not think about it until after posting it to youtube, but I did think of it the other day and then had to mention it here after Gaga played "Dope" on Letterman. I think it is the second time she performed it on a Late Night show, I'm not sure. I really enjoyed "G.U.Y" so much, it was awesome, but "Dope" was the magical reflection of what was on my mind: laziness was all that had been preventing me from changing the title/spell of "High Time" this last week. After realizing the connection I wanted to point it out: Hight Time is the 60's version of Dope, or Dope is the Teens version of High Time. If you don't know the song listen to it, please, but the most obvious connection is Gaga's line "been feeling low from living high for so long" and Hunter's line "I was having a hard time living the good life" and all the permutations of it. This is just a simple example of magic happening to connect things in time, and across time. And they are such good songs I had to bring it up - plus it's nice to see magic at work. The last connection I have to mention is Stephen Colbert. I love him, he is so hilarious and I'm happy for all of us and excited for him to take over Late Night. Even writing that, I realize how significant it is he will lierally be taking over late night. I've always loved Dave, he is so charming and does have such a wide appeal and audience, but I must allow for even great potential for Colbert. I'm not trying to raise expectations to high, just recognize talent and magic and goodness. One connection with Gaga is kind of cosmic - a changing of the Guard. Dave is awesome, so it's not the best analogy from his end, but wait until what I'm really saying about Colbert. Gaga had to fire some peoppe who were in it for the money, not for her - which is crazy to me when so many millions of people are/would be only in it for her. Dave has always been a positive influence and I love, appreciate and will miss him. Colbert can do even more in that slot than he could before on cable, and there is something else. The main thing that makes me so happy about Colbert taking over is for people like me who are too poor for cable. The fact that everybody can get Colbert for free is amazing to me, it transforms the culture. It's like letting a genie out of a bottle. But the main thing I love about this is leaving the Colbert Report persona behind. I will just skim over how Craig Ferguson is better suited, and greatly honored, to have the the even more historic "Late Late Show" - I loved watching that with Tom Snyder as a late teen, thinking I knew what he really meant when he said "sit back and watch the colors as the fly through the air" with psychadelic insight, and those eyes! eyebrows! and hair! - and I guess it made me feel comfortably mature and okay to be smart since I knew I was not the target demographic. I think I'm in the bulls-eye of Ferguson's demographic now, always have been since I watched him from the start. It's ironic that Craig Kilbourne basically gave Colbert his start by having him as a Daily Show reporter when it was a daytime show, gave Jon Stewart his start by leaving for the Late Late Show and gave Ferguson his start by leaving that. I watched all of these all along and always thought Colbert was the peak of the funny. Of course they are all different and of all the late night personalities I think Dave, Ferguson, Colbert, and Conan are all the top tier. Jon Stewart is funny and a good guy but not nearly as funny as Colbert. They both deserve credit, as well as the rest of the show, for taking the Daily Show to such prominence but Colbert's talent and work really earned him his own show. It has been consistently funnier than the Daily Show in my opinion and even more scathing against conservatives. This is what this is really all about, the end of conservative mentality and influence. I have long said that the only good thing about conservatives is that Colbert gets to make fun of it. He's the lotus on the cesspool just as the Simpsons are the lotus on FOX and Bob's Burgers is non-shit floating in it, too. The good always rises to the top, has the greatest influence, ultimately, is one magical message in this. But the most significant magical meaning is a new era of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There is something really magical that this super-hilarious person can finally be himself on TV, and on public TV everyone, even the poor or less-TV-minded, can see. Even as I typed that a muscular dystrophy camp commercial said something like "every kid deserves a chance to be a kid." (I think I said the same thing in my job interview 7 years ago, ha ha. So nice to see magic at work, and have the magic of media to give such surprising examples) But as excited about that as I am, the real Stephen Colbert, I'm just as magically excited about the end of the Colbert Report character. I will still watch it in reruns for fun, but I am so glad about "what this means", to me. I've been predicting, wishing and hioping, and have had faith in the end of conservative influence in America. It seemed like the Tea Party and gun-nuts era and influence were spelling the death of it, and I do believ that even if it is slow to go away. But to me this is a most important sign: Colbert Report was the only good thing about conservativism, being able to make fun of it - but we don't need it anymore, that is "the past." The new, true Colbert will be the present/future. This is the end of conservative influence expressed magically in the world/media. I'm happy about it for so many reasons, but in his context as the end of exclusion and intolerance. It's just a pretty magical connection that it was announced around the same time Gaga made such an inclusive gesture on Dave's show, bringing in the whole audience to a little ArtRave. This is just intellectual confrimation of what I can feel, not just "in my soul" but a stirring in the world-soul, and I've heard the same thing from other people. We are all coming together and it's going to be wonderful, and free.

gagablog 71: The Power of Light, Non-shape of the Cosmos, and Silliness of String Theory

This is about the universe. I teased the secret to the unified field theory and “shape” of the cosmos in the last gagablog but talked around it instead of giving it up. I'm afraid of some Einstein regret, that revealing this before people are ready would allow someone to make war with it, a weapon, but I decided this morning while magically washing dishes that there are 3 reasons not to worry about this: 1. “No one” reads this. (thank you, whoever you are!) 2. The people who read it now, instead of in the future when we will be able to use these ideas peacefully, will most likely be monsters, and therefor least likely to use it for harm 3. I decided if scientists tried to apply it, with non-spiritual intentions towards non-spiritual ends, they would probably disappear, and after a few poofed like that, they would probably stop fucking with it. I will try to say it as simply as possible. It has “nothing” to do with Gaga, and I know so many of these seem Very Loosely or Only Magically connected to Gaga. I'm not going away, I'm making a point. I'm not playing hard-to-get because she's never noticed my videos, ha ha, I know the odds of that, but I did want to talk about the “edge” of the cosmos to explain how it really works, and why String Theory is so silly, and it just so happens I have been intentionally “keeping myself” from Gaga as much a possible lately. I've done this in order to write my own impressions of Artpop before hearing her lyrical explanation, from months ago, before watching any of the performances (I think I'm still bitter over how much the Swinefest froze every second, and I realized if I missed live events I could always catch up later, and of course I keep falling further behind), before wathing any of her interviews. I did happen to see some of the one with Johnny Weir and have read some quotes from her from/about SXSW, but mostly I've just been listening to a lot of Artpop and some of her previous albums. I'm about as far away, as far behind, as old, as I can stand to be, I need to get back in, catch up, get current, through the magic of making art, music, and more Gaga-related writing – and of course rewarding myself by finally watching what I've missed. But while I'm out here I'll explain the universe, and this is the last thing I'll say about Gaga for this edition: as a little monster, Gaga is the center of our universe (“listen to her radiate her magic” played as I wrote that) and we live in a sphere she creates, we live in yearly eras of her albums and daily eras of her fashion. We can go to the center of the universe, though, through her music and videos and pictures, to the Ball and be with her, and so many monsters have met her, have hugged and kissed and touched her and taken a Covetable Selfie with her. We can be Gaga in our own ways, just as science guesses that every point is a center of the universe (“I own the world, we own the world” she sang as I wrote that) – that is why I say that about catching up through the magic of Art – to make more art is to be more like Gaga, to make more Love in the world. We each make our own art, of course, but it is that common core of inspiration that connects us. But so many people just don't get Gaga, or aren't even aware of her. I'm as out-of-touch as ever, and though I always think about her just as I always think of Love, as much as I can remember, I can feel the distance. The more we get into our love, for Art, for Gaga, for each other, for everyone and everything, the more comfortable it gets, closer to the loving center of the universe. And you can be far enough away from a star that you don't even know it exists – that's what I'm here to talk abut, so that is all I will say about Gaga in this one, the rest will be poking gentle fun at science because they could easily get this stuff themselves If they would only accept a spiritual perspective. You can be far enough away from a star to never know it exists. This is because of the power of light. I usually talk glowingly about the power of light, how it creates everything and is everything, but in this instance I have to talk about a limited power of light. I had to write this in response to what FOX Cosmos presented as a current scientific view of the universe, that they can see so far that there appears to be an edge, a point at which there are no more stars. And the idea that if you were at that place you would still see stars in every direction – it's not really an edge any more than we are, though we would surely appear at the edge from certain other distant locations. Science seems to have made some rather silly conclusions based on these ideas. One is the Donut-shaped universe idea which Stephen Hawking joked that he stole from Homer Simpson. The secret is Homer had the better idea because of how much he loves donuts. Hawking also misled us for decades by contributing to the idea of black holes that never let light escape which he recently modified by saying they only hold it along time. I feel like I had a better intuitive understanding of these things when I first became aware of the idea of black holes, when I was a kid probably around 1986 or '87. I imagined there had to be little ones, and micro-ones, everywhere, a mesh of “darkness” entangling with the rest of the cosmos, a network of light – maybe mingling in matter. And dark matter, much less dense than black holes themselves, would be kind of like a cloud around them, just as gas and planets of all phases and asteroids are like clouds around stars. They are just now proving more about dark matter but it always made sense from the more intuitively, spiritually-derived perspective of duality intermeshing – but that idea has been around for thousands of years, I guess I got it from some Hindu or Buddhist or Taoist ideas when I was a kid. And this happens on the micro level as well, within what seems to be solid matter and energy waves through matter and the void, and it happens in the middle, from our perspective of time, (day and night, seasons, and past/future and present) to cycles of personality and cycles of human activity (the rise and fall of civilizations). I guess the most donut-shaped reality I saw was an interwoven mesh of donuts of every size, just this relationship of the networks of light-explosions and dark-collapses at every level. This is the nature of the fabric of the universe, and what we seem to have trouble keeping in mind is the swirliness of it, and what that means. The scientific mentality has been too focused on trying to map out, stretch out some flattened understanding, model of the universe, and this is why is appears the way it does and leads to conclusions like a donut shape or string theory. If we can accept more of what we know about the nature of what we are looking through we can understand what it is really like, not try to make it fit what we expect, how we are used to seeing things with sides, ends, edges and surfaces. (By the way, the same ideas applied at the microlevel are the secrets of magic, psychic communication and awareness, invisibility, intangibility, teleportation, flight, longevity, etc.) This is why it comes down to the power of light, and a seeming limitation of even that greatest creative force. The conclusion of a donut-shaped, wrap-around universe, and that space-time is curved, and that any of it had a beginning, is based on looking as far away/back in time and seeing nothing further, yet also knowing that at that point things stars and space would still appear in every direction. It must curve around in a circle to explain this, kind of like when you go off the screen on the left or right side of Pac-Man or Joust and come out the other side, or when you go off any edge of Asteroids and come out the other side. It's like those fields are on a cylinder. The same kind of imagining wraps the universe around into a donut, and that is okay and fun but it misses out on how this mobius, this twist in space-time, is happening/shaping things at every level. If the “whole thing” is a donut, what is in the middle, outside of it, and is there any icing or sprinkles? It doesn't make sense or feel right. We only imagine a donut shape because of the ring-i-ness of all of it, the way reality is intermeshed. When you keep in mind the power of light, the power/depth of vision, the swirliness of the universe and especially if you have played enough Mario Party or similar games there is an easier way to explain it. First consider the power of light with a simple example. A candle in a small room might light the whole thing, but the same candle in the middle of a gym wont light the walls, or only dimly. You could stand at the wall and see the globe of light the candle produced, or you could stand in that range and be lit by it. A brighter light from the same location could light the whole thing and you no matter where you stand. You can see a candle from a far distance, as a point of light (maybe that globe becomes a point) but from a further distance you can't see it. But a lighthouse at the same place could be seen from that distance. And still there is a further distance from which even a lighthouse can't be seen. I'm sorry if this seems obvious, it just does not seem like it is obvious to scientists who study the cosmos, from the conclusions that seem to be popular currently. All stars have a globe of light they produce, a certain size depending on their intensity and a certain duration based upon how long the star shines but also based on that globe-size – the larger ones stretch further in time as well as space, and therefore in both ways have more chances of showing up to/in other spheres. But no matter how bright a star is, no matter how much power, intensity, fuel is in each beam, it can only go so far. All light travels at the same speed, it's one of those super-cool constants, but it goes longer, further in time and space, or “space-time”, the more intense it is. We know that when we see what appears to be the edge of the universe it looks that way because there is “nothing” beyond it, and we know that at that point, relative to us, we are looking as far back in time as possible (which is why I imagine it works both ways, and from that point “at the same time”, we would look like the edge of the universe, though of course we can still see what is further in that same direction, from our perpective, just as they supposedly can from that edge). Maybe I'm missing something but it seems obvious to me that it is a matter of looking “through” so much time, that the stars that are even further than that, even the really big ones, would not have had influence, in space-time seen along that particular line, to show up. We know that what we are seeing at that “greatest distance” is also long ago, the “beginning” of time, but it does not make sense to think that it is the beginning of time, for “them”, to the perspective of that point. We could appear as the same edge to certain other points in the universe, but just because they happened to look at us and see us that way does not mean they would be seeing the beginning of time, it would just appear that way. Light can only go so far but it does have after-effects – the collision of photons that I suppose propels it along, the intensity, is also what produces matter and antimatter and while light itself is radiation I imagine this operation, and it's passage through time, produces other kinds of radiation as well, and some of these might be how it hooks in and is bent by matter and gravity fields. Maybe this kind of residue is what shows up “beyond the edge” as red cloudy stuff. The truth I feel intuitively is that there is much more further out there, but nothing so bright, strong enough, that it could have lasted long enough to meet our vision-line when we've stretched it that far. It's not that there is a beginning of time, it is just this one limitation of light, the fuel of it - which in reverse is the limitation of vision, how far back in time/away in space it can possibly look - in assessing the depth of the infinite: we can only see so far, but if we think about it we can be sure there is much more. And the same stars we can't see in one particular direction we might be able to in another, which is why it is so silly to make a conclusion about the “shape” of something by the appearance of looking down one line within/across it. I'm not saying it isn't helpful, it's great, but to make better conclusions I think we need to keep in mind the swirliness of it all and how that affects looking in any one direction. It's not enough to realize that as we look further we look back in time, there is further modification and adjustment to a beam of light and the path of vision. The speed of light is constant, it does not change, yet the space-time the light passed through is moving forward and backward, and to every side, in different sections along the line as it passes through different swirling galaxies and solar systems. What we like to imagine as a straight line, a line of vision, between us and the edge of the universe actually bends around stars, dark and light, and bends relative to how close to the black hole centers of gravity it goes, as well as bending off and diffusing with the natural dispersion of light and mini-bends around particles instead of just planets and micro-black holes instead of just the big ones – but these would be much slighter bends, just fuzziness on the surface of the beam. We know that light is bent by gravitational fields, and if we were really thinking about the meaning of the constant speed of light, with the ability for it to bend and change directions, it would lead to the secret of space-time, we could develop a cosmic French Curve to relate to any part of of the universe. We can even see examples of light bending around edges, and I think studying light, optics, and relativity in physics in 9th and 10th grades, with Mr. Pappas, seemed to verify my ideas. So what we wish was a straight line out of the universe, to see the edge by looking further and further in “one direction”,m is actually a line that bends and twists all throughout the cosmos like a line of string in a ball. It could be going all over the place and almost reach back to Earth, even, but run out of gas, go too far back and not be able to reach the Earth (or whatever used to be in “this location” that long ago). But by this logic we should be able to look in certain directions and follow a line that does curve back around with enough “fuel”/intensity left to get back to the earth and see the earth in the past, like making a satellite map – but the direction to get the right combination of twists always changes. If you had an instrument that could be tuned to adjust with all these fluctuations of swirliness, adjusting the directions to watch the earth, or anything, moment-to-moment, you could piece the still images of the past into video of it. This is a pretty narcissistic application of what we can do by really understanding the way light bends and the universe swirls within itself, but it is interesting that it could be how psychic people have been able to look back and see events of the past: their line of vision might not have to pierce a far distance, rounding stars to return and get an image of the past earth, such length of vision/time would likely be un-useful, and the way we understand it, could not show anything recent. But bending ones vision, tuning into the light beams, that have been twisting around the mesh of micro-black holes, the ones that pepper all matter, space, and light, it's possibe to see anything, at any time, from the past. The magical complementary nature of light and vision is a clue to how we can see the future, naturally, too. But devices allow us to look, extend a line of vision, much further. I don't know if there is a scientific concept for this line of vision, opposite of light, idea, but I think of it like the path light is set to travel on, or going back along light in the opposite direction to which is is moving, like an undercurrent that carries you back to the source. I feel like this is how black hole-ishness is also within light, that space for the current of vision to travel back up the light beam, in the opposite direction. But that line of vision we like to think is straight is curving around the universe. Also, while, like the speed of light, the speed of vision is constant, it always passes through space-time that is moving back and forth relative to it's direction. So if the line/direction you pick happens to pass through more space-time that is moving towards whichever direction the line is coming from at that time, it is like going upstream in space-time and though it has the power/fuel/focus – the magnification of vision – to see back say a million light-years if it ends up going upstream a lot it might only show half a million years ago and not nearly a million light years away. If you stretched the twisting line out straight, the line of a beam of light or the line of vision, even though it had the power to go a million light years the current might shorten it to less. Conversely, if it's direction means it passes through more space-time that is moving away from the direction it is coming from at that moment, it can be carried down current, and a line that only has the power to see a million years ago, or a lightbeam that only has the power to go a million years into the future, a million light-years away, might actually go further, just depending on which way it goes. But regardless of how far the same intensity beam goes, at the end of it will appear to be “the end”- though one that went furhter would of course find a further end. This is the conundrum of looking into infinity with finite tools, even really far-reaching ones. And the speed of light/vision never changes, it stays the same, but the very space-time it passes through is moving, making the full reach and length variable depending on how it goes. From this perspective black holes could merely be knots that a lot of twisting goes around but not because of a density there, holding it in - just like there is not a dark heart of knots that does not want to let go – just because a lot of bends got tangled together there. Really teasing this out probably requires seeing how the big is within the small and really different subjects for later, so I'll just finish this as simply as possible. To Keep in Mind the Effects of the Swirliness of the Universe is the reason why it is a good idea to not spend so much time in a lab or observatory or at a desk that you don't play some Mario Party. Most Mario Party games have a minigame where you have to race opponents by jumping from one rotating circle to another. This is a simplified model of the swirliness of the universe, a cross section where it is all on the same plane to see it easily but the real difference is some circles are spinning clockwise and others counterclockwise from the top-down perspective and you have to move across them. In this case you are like a beam of light moving through rotating spheres. When you are running with the rotations, you cover more area faster and running against too many of them you will lose the race. You all go the same speed if you all hold down “B”, just like the speed of light stays constant, but the flow of space-time it passes through changes, expanding and contacting, depending on the direction you go. So even the same powered telescope could see further if it planned a direction to take advantage of more swirling-away space time, going downstream. From an arbitrary race-track, overhead reference, like in Mario Party, the characters seem to go faster along the “progress line” toward the finish when going with the rotation and slower when going against it, but we know the speed of light is constant and does not actually have the speed of the space-motion added to it. From this we can conclude that space-time itself contacts and expands relative to light. There are in fact two ways of measuring speed, space, and time: You can measure object's speed, etc, relative to other objects or relative to light itself, to lightspeed itself. And the ways we have tended to think about it scientifically, the distance between things along imaginary straight lines, lengths and size, are not as important as curviness and swirliness and how those effect contraction and expansion according to direction. From one perspective, everything we can think about is moving at speeds that are so slow compared to lightspeed that they don't even matter, the difference between them is negligable. But of course it matters to us if we are hit by something traveling 0.5 or 50 miles per hour. Science says that nothing except light can travel light-speed and we can theoretically travel close to light speed and faster-than-light, FTL. This has always seemed suspicious to me and I guessed that the secret was that in ways we/everything is always traveling at light-speed, this was the secret to how we are all made of light and also reflect, absorb, and project light, as well as all sorts of radiant energy both discovered and yet-undiscovered. We can either look at things from a physical perspective, how they relate to one another, or a more spiritual perspective, how they relate to the oneness, the constant, that is light. Even from the physical perspective of a mechanical universe of wheels within wheels, it seemed apparent to me that with the immense size of the universe and everything going in different directions, it would not be too hard to find some incredible relative speeds between different bodies. Imagine measuring our speed, or the speed of anything, from different points in the universe. From points near the Earth, everything is moving at 2,100 miles per hour, or whatever the Earth's rotational speed. But from certain points around the solar system, or outside it, you would add that 2,100 miles an hour to the speed the Earth orbits around the sun – much faster. It is so much faster that the rotation of the earth does not seem fast by comparison, but you can add it in for the speed relative to certain points. And from certain points, within or outside the galaxy, you could add that total speed to the the speed the sun moves through the galaxy, and the rotation of the galaxy itself. Each of these becomes astronomically larger speeds, and only from certain points at certain times are they able to add all together – if you looked at it like concentric circles, especially a nice flat solar system in a nice flat plane of a spiral galaxy (I think ours is tilted relative to the galactic plane) then this would be like looking at the “westernmost” point on a planet in a solar system in a galaxy in a whatever all at the 9 o'clock position – whatever location and time they can be seen in that arrangement from. Or any position, as long as it is the same relative to the point being measured from so all the speeds add up. I could be completely mistaken, but with the size and swirliness of the universe it seems like it would be possible to find things that at certain times were moving more than 50% of lightspeed away from each other, when you add up all the speeds from a point where they all add up. And again, the immensity of the universe suggests that you could find the same thing, moving away at the same incredible speed, in the opposite direction. So these two things would be moving FTL relative to each other – but I seem to recall that even adding 60% of light-speed to another 60% does not add up to 120% lightspeed, theoretically, but because of “strange things” that happen as you approach lightspeed you never “hit” it. I've always thought this was a limitation of science not being able to understand how from certain perspectives, or at certain “times”, we become light, or everything is light when you trace it back or forward far enough. From the perspective of everything is light, space-time is just what happens, what happens to light/everything. And it happens on macro-micro scales that circle around within each other, which is why we see such similar patterns on large and small scales. This is one secret of entanglement, the big going into the little and vice versa, but I don't want to get wrapped up in it just now. I have two ideas, one is that strange things do happen as you approach light-speed, and the other is that this is wrong, a flawed assumption based on the idea that nothing goes lightspeed except light that fails to see how everything relates to light as a common ancestor, and how everything can actually go light-speed, and always is, relative to other things. If the latter idea is true it means we are always going exactly lightspeed relative to specific other points in the universe, but those points change every moment. And we are going FTL relative to other points, as we know is theoretically possible but can't really imagine, and of course we could not see the stars that are going FTL away from us, and maybe not towards us, either. The things that are moving exactly ligthspeed away from us would leave what could appear to be a static trail of light behind them, towards us, but it would never reach us, the first glimmer would be left at that point in the middle as the source-star was moving away, t\railing the light behind it. If you were at that point you could step closer to that source star, like stepping into the globe of light of the candle in the gym, but if you stepped further away from that point, towards Earth in this analogy, you would never see that source-star, the light could never reach you with the universe moving those directions at those speeds. We've accepted that nothing but light can go lightspeed, and maybe I'm stupidly oversimplifying it to just assume you really can - and do - go lightspeed relative to a different arrangement of points in the universe at any given time. But even if that is not the case, the same idea of a shifting arrangement of points relative to which you approach lightspeed, a system you go through in which you have a strange relationship to different points, in the void or stars or planets, suggests some cool ideas to me. It reminds me of astrology. I understand how astrologers might not be too interested in astronomy or physics or the nature of reality, they have ancient knowledge and a working system and can discover more things, new and old, and learn from each other and increase the use of their skills to meet their needs. I've never understood much of it, other than how much sense it seemed to make, the more in depth the more it seemed to reveal. I've always paid attention to scientific discoveries, and they always give me ideas, but I wonder why scientists never consider them from an astrological perspective, just trying to overlap some of those ideas from astrology to understand new discoveries in the universe, even if that means assuming it has some sort of “effect” on us and looking for those things. I kind of see the system of changing things we are going extremely fast relative to as a type of micro-meta astrology: I think if we could measure it and process that information we would discover cool things about being linked by extreme speed, or by harmonious movement so that we are going nowhere relative to so many points. Even if my assumptions are way off and we can't approach or be light-speed, moving extremely fast relative to certain things has implications when seen from an astrological perspective, and will from a scientific perspective when we know more about how things influence each other based on arrangement, even at impossible distances. But I think, suspect, that we can, that we always are, and it is just a cool phenomenon, like a strobe-light globe or disco-ball, that we are interestingly connected to different points in the universe, near and far, by strangely moving really fast relative to them or being still with them, connected harmoniously. And of course connected in some ways to the movements of everything else. I think I mentioned in the gagablog at some point how I heard about gamma rays, I think, and how they shot out of supernova explosions at such a rate that they pulsed through the universe and passed through everything, almost at “the same time”, uniting everything in an explosion. I kind of suspect all our ideas about the big bang, and a limited size of the universe even as immense as it is, is really just looking back in a directions where you eventually get to one of these supernovas, or something like it, maybe even on a much grander scale, but the truth is it happens all the time, over and over, there was not one Big Bang at some “beginning” but there are always more and more bangs, some Really Big and some just big. The supreme importance of directionality and playing the curves and movement of things over power and distance has implications for our personal cosmoses as well. I guess it is the secret to interstellar, interdimensional travel, but it also applies magically to us: what matters is where we direct our focus, what we focus on is what we manifest, what people are coming to understand currently as the law of attraction. I just suspect it goes way further than that, that we can learn from connections far subtler and far-reaching than just our desires and emotions, from astrology to the meta-micro-astrology that could be developed by looking at things scientifically with awareness of these super-distance (and super-”tiny”, honestly) connections and looking for their interrelating effects. What does all this have to do with String Theory? Well, when I first heard of string theory I assumed it was that the universe could be seen like a ball of string and I still think that is a better model than what I think it is after learning more about it. I kind of see any observation of the universe to be looking along a twisting string, the same as lightbeams twist through the cosmos as I've been discussing. It's all twisting paths through a twisting cosmos, and only freezing it all and looking along a 'straight” line makes a single string that twines around into a ball. The closer model is that every point, and every line from every point, has a string and ball of string, and strings of different natures making differently shaped balls, and that they are all so intertwined that they have to be like ghosts haunting each other, passing through each other and effecting each other based on the infinite “fabrics” of string, from light to all other radiation spectrums and the ones we've yet to detect. It's like infinite balls of string, all intermingling and coexisting through infinite “dimensions”, combinations of directions. But what I came to hear about String Theory made me think the actual, scientific idea is more that there are a bunch of strings, or infinite bunches of strings, and that things can be perceived, or we might be, on one string but there are many other stings next to it representing “alternate realities.” Look, I'm as big a comic book fan as any true 20th-century nerd, but I just don't need this explanation. There don't need to be alternate realities if we realize how intertwined this reality is, really being aware of the effect of how much it actually twists and swirls within itself but also with all it's weird forces and connections, most of which we have yet to detect. When we do detect more of them they give us different clues, like the gamma rays that travel so fast they seem to connect whole sections of the cosmos in a beat of time, like a cosmic pulse that comes from different parts of the universe, from different ones. I think there are different rays we are now detecting by monitoring for the blue flashes they produce deep in ice, but they pass through everything and it seems like they have some unique quality, like they all go the same direction or can't be bent. “The same direction” might imply they don't radiate out of anything, but move along like a wall (?) but measuring them should provide some unique understanding of time, just as measuring gamma ray, supernova explosions could, or any other phenomenon, including better understanding of our traditional time measure of light-radiation. I hate to give credit to FOX for anything but I do get into thinking of these things thanks to their new crapped-out version of the Cosmos show bringing up different ideas, and I do like the visuals. I must admit they presented some ideas I had not heard of, I think, but the only one that comes to mind is that what we see as the sunrise is actually a projection, a mirage, on the lens of the atmosphere, and we see that before the sun actually crests the horizon due to the way the light is bent coming into the atmosphere – like you see fish through the water surface in a different place, I suppose. But I'm guessing, or remembering, that you see it 8 minutes before it actually appears. I think that would be ironic if that is the number, because the light takes an average of 8 minutes to reach earth from the sun. If it lines up, this seems interesting to me that the illusion would actually compensate for the time difference so that we actually are seeing the sun as it actually is, at that moment, during sunrise and sunset – though the rest of the day we are mostly seeing it 8 minutes late, though maybe there is lesser compensation from the atmospheric lens from different angles. Of course there are so many reasons, mostly beauty, that we love sunrises and sunsets, but it seemed magical to me that we might get out and look at them and be connected in that special way, the union of illusion and reality, that is a unique connection, like love, between the earth and sun. That's about it, that the universe is vast, complex, and swirly enough that we don't need alternate universes, just to understand how the one we are in is folded and twisted around itself. There's probably a lot more to be said about how it all works on the small, and micro, scale, about light within the world, all the various light and other radiation we make and respond to, and the light within everything – how when you really get to thinking about it everything is always lightspeed, nothing isn't, due to the nature of everything relative to light, and how how all the cosmos is a relative of light. I guess, besides or as part of trying to describe the micro-macro twist, there could be more to said about the dark side or black holes, but I almost think they are like the centers of knots, darkness that is not trying to hold everything in but is just produced by where many different strings or kinds of strings have bent around each other. But if reality can be seen like a fractal, like all fractals, then you can zoom in on that twist, that knot, pull out the tightest strings and loosen them all up, release the knot some and figure it out. We're not going to do this to a cosmic black hole, I guess, but the same thing applies on our smaller magical level – teasing out the knots of mysteries or conflicts, where forces twist around each other, by taking closer awareness can dispel what seems to be a black hole, a pit from which nothing escapes. Maybe more on this if anyone is interested, all of this is probably better discussed than just written, so the conversation can follow understanding, what resonates with different people. But I decided this was a good time to get these ideas out there, and hopefully trigger something good. I'm sorry I didn't say it simpler, quicker as I always hope, maybe I will in some future edit of all this stuff. Anyway, I'm excited to get back to Gaga after all this science-joke explaining – I haven't even seen the G.U.Y. Video yet! The Do What You Want With My Body video might come out before I catch up, at this rate, but if I catch up with more of her performances, and with more of my own art, by the time I get to see her this summer I will be very excited, getting closer to Gaga and the speed of light, of pure creativity.

gagablog 70: Favoritism, the seed of War, and Peace, rooting it out: Ukraine and the Simpsons

A basic reason I worship Lady Gaga as the Goddess is her inclusiveness. It reminds me of some of my favorite ideas from buddhism and Jesus, interconnectedness and the kingdom of heaven. Gaga reaches out to and includes the misfits of the world and maybe it's because I am one that I have put so much emphasis on these spiritual ideas, and certainly it is part of why I'm a little monster and love her so much. Buddishm teaches interconnectedness, and realizing how we are all part of the same thing gives us the focus to do good and act with obligation to one another, to all life and existence. Even though it is a spiritual reality that we are all connected, the social and legal reality most people live in is very different: some people are privileged and many more are disadvantaged and even oppressed. Realizing we are all interconnected and acting out of a sense of duty to discover and end suffering in any way we can, wherever it exists, can solve all of our problems and that is where the kingdom of heaven and Gaga come in. Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like the good shepherd who leaves the flock to find the lost sheep. This is what Gaga does for me, she leaves the crowd to find and include all the people who have been left out, or outcast. All too often people are misfits, outcasts, and oppressed because of their art or sexuality, it is something that is still happening in most places around the world. Thankfully we are starting to form and see the future where that goes away but far too many places are still stuck in the past, and so many people are stuck in those places, but Gaga is reaching out to us and bringing us together. And it is happening all over the world with more and more people playing their roles better by reaching out to more people, from Pope Francis to the Australian billionaire untiing the world religions to end slavery to the activists joining together around the world to address climate change. I respond to Gaga because she liberates me and encourages me as an artist, and because she addresses some of the major issues of our times I've always been concerned about, justice and equality for people without deescrimination based on sexuality and caring for, respecting, and listening to kids. Gaga is the Good Shepherd to me, the one who transforms the flock into the Kingdom of Heaven by completing it, by finding the one that was lost and left out by the herdiness. "Leaving the flock" means leaving convention, the past, the mainstream behind to find the ones who are suffering for being left out, and it also means leaving the normal to enter the world of Art. We all leave the flock and find lost sheep, we all become good shepherds, any time we make art, we do this magic out of our heart that can reach out to someone over space and time and bring them back, make them feel connected. Gaga is doing it on the most major, intentional, artistic scale, reuniting so many people and turning us on to do so for others. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, on earth, within our reach if we reach for it. Discovering it is all about finding those who are left out, bringing them back and honoring their stories to change the world of the ways that outcast them. This includes gay people and it is a major civil rights issue of our times, and it also includes kids, the poor, potsmokers and drugusers, and so many other "categories" of people around the world, depending on where you live and who is "in charge" there. The whole point is that we can't play favorites, that is injustice, but the system almost always does, no matter which system it is, and often the result is horrible suffering for people. So if there is ever any fovorite to be had, it is never the one who is already favored but the one who is left out - though once that one is restored there is no favoritsm and this is what makes it the kingdom of heaven. This all comes down to favoritism. We all know that favoritism is injustice, we all personally feel the wrong of being treated differently from our siblings and peers. We all know that favoritism is wrong, on a personal level. But on social and national levels, all sorts of horrible favoritism and oppression continues, and even continues long after we know about it. We've known for decades that prosecution for weed was descriminatory, that it imprisoned far more black people than white people, and it is on that basis that Washington D.C. just decriminalized weed this week. But it is still just one of a few cities and two states to actually move into the future on this, with still a long ways to go. Favoritism might seem like a nicer word than descrimination but it is not meant to be, it is the same thing. It is unjust that weed is illegal for a lot of other reasons, too, but just the descrimination against black people should be enough to have made us change our ways. At least we are starting to, and as the places that do prosper it will be more obvious to everyone that it is the future. Gaga seems to have always recognized this and I think of "Mary Jane Holland" as a tribute to it. Favoritism is the source of suffering within societies. The people in power, representing paticular group, tend favor that group and risk not being as concerned for the "other" people their decisions effect. Good leaders will seek to serve everyone, of course, and that is what we hope for, but unfortunately not what most of us live with. Actual democracy, communication, health, and education all work towards improving our systems and leaders (which is why Republicans in America oppose these things) but the secret ingredient a good leader needs to bring it all together is that Good Shepherd quality, to seek out and favor the ones that the system has not been favoring. I tend to get suspicious of the idea of doing something for your country, probably because I'm from America and we've done some pretty bad shit. But when I was thinking about it recently I realized I need to make a distinction: there is nothing wrong with doing something for your country if it means helping other people, your fellow countryfolk. But doing something in the name of doing something for your country can lead to some horrible results. Anything that leads to the idea that you can kill or oppress someone else in the name of "your country" is wrong because it violates the principle of interconnectedness: this is the principle that makes it a good thing to see yourself as part of a community or country as long as it motivates you to do good to others, and even better to see yourself as part of humanity, life, oor existence in general to do the most good to the most different kinds of "others." Of course I was thinking about this because of the crisis in Ukraine but it all comes down to favoritism. Favoritism basically leads to war and we need to cut it out. Say you take over a country and you treat the people unfairly. The ones you mistreat will revolt and wage war on you, eventually. Or if you are the captain of a ship. Or if you live in a family, or have a job, or go to school, or interact with people - admittedly in more minor ways but that is why examples are fun. Favoritism is wrong at any level, and when it gets big and powerful and becomes part of the system it has really bad effects. One of the worst is war. They act like we have to avoid war with Russia since they took over Crimea. I wish we would just be smart enough, on both sides, to say we are definitely not going to war then proceed from that foundation to do the best thing. At every stage of the imagined potential conflict I see favoritism as the seed that grows into war. When the Russians went into Crimea they said it was to help the Russian-speaking population there, showing favor for their concerns - but the idea was to protect them against descrimination, favoritism, from Ukraine, supposedly. So, now that they are in control of the area, if their true objective is to prevent favoritism and descrimination, everything could be fine - they not only won't descriminate against the other ethnic/linguistic communities in Crimea they will really seek to make those people as happy as can be, like a Good Shepherd, because they know the system of government that was "chosen" was only by the russian-speaking majority (most everybody else boycotted the vote anyway.) I don't think I'm just being cynical to suspect Russia won't really do that, and may even invade other areas. Because I don't think they took Crimea for their noble reason of opposing favoritism, they did it for their own favoritism for the russian-speaking population. To be more specific, that is how they propogandized it to their people and the world, but they have their own greedier, more selfish reasons at heart, I'm sure. But if they were to treat all the people in Crimea incredibly well, and only invade other places that "really asked for it" and did the same there, I don't see what the problem is, really, unless it is our own favoritism that we would rather not more area be called "Russia." Unfortunately, this is not the likeliest future given what we seen and can conclude about their leadership and it's benevolence or lack therof. And we are not innocent by any means - there is a dangerous level of favoritism we have in place, on "our side." Imagining the crisis in Ukraine escalating to Russia taking more territory, and a military response from Ukraine, we can see how favoritism leads to war at every stage, and how at some point it must be stopped. Russia keeps justifying taking territory by saying it protects russian people from favoritism, but the more aggressively they do this the more obvious it becomes that it is not really about protecting people but for their own concerns. I beleive Poland has pledged to assist Ukraine if Russia invades, which on the one hand is a nice thing to do, helping a weaker country against a bully. But it could lead to terrible results, because it is basically Poland taking sides, playing favorites. The solution is not to say "well so long Ukraine, can't help you, go be Russia." And it is certainly not war. It is something in between, something completely different as Monty Python says and as I predicted for Syria, and it involves rooting out favoritism. I will get into what it is, but first I'll conclude the nightmare scenario. If Poland plays favorites and gets involved and it turns into war between Russia and Poland, that starts World War Three because of the institutional favoritism of the NATO alliance that any attack on Poland is an attack on all allies. This whole thing makes me realize how fundamentally wrong such favoritism for "member countries" is, the whole threat of it supposedly to avoid war but really committing us to more possibilities for war - the nature of favoritism on such alarge scale. And yet a similar thing, in the face of international terrorism, for instance, an alliance between all countries, with no favorites, that any attack on the people of one is an attack on the whole world, well, that is something different and far more ideal. Of course the followup, to be good leaders/shepherds, would be to identify who is trying to terrorize, what their complaint is, and somehow make it right. There is no real reason to have an alliance, to have favorite countries - it's based on an idea that we can only get along with the more similar ones, the flock we belong to instead of reaching out to the others. Acting in the name of a country, or an alliance, to the extent that you can kill someone or start a war should be a sign that something is horribly wrong. Of course there are different ways of governing in different places, and a lot of bad stuff all around, but if we respect each other neough to work together and learn from each other we can improve all around. Japan has been the only country that continued whaling after international laws against it, by creating a loophole. But last week the U.N. (I guess) closed the loophole. Japan said it was unfair, and there was a time when people were scared and hopeful to find out if Japan would comply or balk the law, having called it unfair. But it was only a few hours and then Japan announced they would comply out of respect for international law. People fear global government because they assume it would be evil based on evils of more localized variety, but it really can be good and it will be if we insist on it and make it good. It's all about being aware that any system, any flock, has a lot of good qualities but can only be it's best when aware that it causes suffering, too, either intentionally or accidentally, but to be aware of this and work to restore what is lost and eliminate suffering. Gaga is already doing this in a cultural sense, reaching out to people and bringing our stories and art to light. The best governments are doing more and more to take care of people and religions that had been getting it backwards are getting better at this, too. As individuals we can all do more of it and do more to demand justice from our governments, and restore them to justice when necessary. The whole situation in the Ukraine started with the election of the pro-Russian Yanokovitch 5 years ago, and the tipping point was when the population voted for more alliance with the EU but Russia gave Yanokovitch 15 billion dollars to stick with them, which he did. So the people revolted and one symbol of the revolution was their discovery of his palace, zoo, vehicles, etc. after he fled the country. This is just a very symbolic example of how he had his own interests, not the people of Ukrainne, in mind. The same can be said of the Russian motivation to control Ukraine, not to help the people the most but to profit most from them. They made this clear last week when they raised the gas prices on Ukraine by 50%. This is like if you broke up with your landlady and she raised your rent by half, just lame and spiteful, and shows what they really care about, money. The fact that the EU and America did not impose harsher sanctions on Russia also shows that they mostly care about money, they don't want to hurt their own economy by freezing sizeable russian assests invested in their countries. But people will quickly see what game is being played and what their leaders' interests really are - unless we go the other way and let them whip us into a frenzy for war. But we are too smart for that. Yes, even we are too smart for that now. The whole messed-up scenario suggests the solution to it, that's the magic of it. Apparently, Ukraine owed Russia 15 billion dollars for its gas bill, then Russia gave Ukraine 15 billion to bribe them out of the voted-upon alliance with Europe, but Yanokovitch took that, so after the revolution the US loaned Ukraine 15 billion and gave them a billion, I think. All this is to stabalize the economy, I guess, but to me it presents a simple solution to so many problems. It's all about a gas bill, and who gets to sell oil and gas, and the whole issue on all sides has to do, ultimately, with the evils of this giant oil industry and their influence on governments. And so we will end it. In this specific case, I think there is a wonderful solution that is a model for the world of the future. Concerned countries should pitch in and buy Ukraine a bunch of tankers full of oil, as many as they need for a few years or whatever, and just give it to them, on this condition: all available industry and potential for industry should go towards replacing their sources with completely renewable energy so that by the time the free gas runs out they won't need to buy any more from Russia, or anyone. We certainly could do this, but one reason we probably won't is that "we" don't want countries going off the gas, that is the influence of gas companies in our government means we want contries buying gas from somebody, namely "us", but definitely buying gas. The thing is, this is destroying the planet, we can't keep doing it, we have to stop somewhere and turn it around in a major way, whole countries at a time. This crisis could be a great opportunity, the same word in Japanese, as Homer says, "Chrisitunity" - which sounds kind of like "Christ community." We need such radical change in the world, going off of gas is a major part of it, and once we start changin these things so much will change. I think these ancient mentalities of power and control are being fundamentally dismantled and while countries think they can make us go to war over nationalistic ideals, and many of us still will, the better natures and talents will take over and find better ways. The more we work together the faster this will happen, which is why it is so important to reach out to everyone and get everyone involved. Just because the way we used to do things might result in going to war does not mean we can't find better ways. I'm all about the connections between random events, things I encounter in the media, and events in my life or the news, I love to look for magical relationships. I was reading a book I got from the kid's non-fiction section of the library about the 1930's in America and how appeasing the Nazis let them take more and more territory, but I hope everybody learned a lesson about that and why it is wrong. America is guilty of invading and taking over countries, too, and probably the worst terrorists were created when Americans funded and armed the resistance to Russian occupation of Afghanistan, then we did it for ten years, too. There is just no priciple in war: they say all is fair in love and war but the truth is love is really good and fair in that way but war is totally unfair and bad. - - I wrote all this in the morning and am finishing it at night, right after seeing the president of NATO on Charlie Rose, and after him American Commanding General MacMasters, who said that Americans don't expect, and never should, fight a fair war. This is just being honest about how all our wars are assymetrical, the American military is bigger than the next ten biggest militaries in the world combined. But my point is the war is always unfair, always against the principles of interconnectedness and Good Shepherdship, because it is based on the idea that one interest, one side getting their way, is worth killing people. It's not worth killing anybody, especially not lots of people, either soldiers or "innocent" people - because we are all truly innocent, the victims, of the forces that drive us to war. We are all succeptible to favoritism as well, we might not be likely to see our own priveleges, or know how other people suffer, and we can be inadvertently swept up in the factors that lead to war, or other sufferings, if we are not diligent against it by rooting out favoritism in ourseleves, our media and our government policies and actions. i have three examples from recent TV and radio that help me keep in mind how favoritism is what holds us back in so many ways, all the worst things we do, in fact, as bad as war in different ways. One was a man talking about the fight for marriage equality and how it originated in San Francisco during the worst years of the AIDS epedemic, how AIDS devestated people's lives before their eyes and everyone either died, was dying, or caring for someone dying. Thousands of people were dying a year for years, and after what they went through the man being interviewed said something like how dare anyone say it was not an equal relationship or deny them the rights of a family after what they went through. No one can deny that gay people have been oppressed and repressed in America and it is the result of this oppression that will ultimately lead to people working together for justice. This is a pattern all people will follow regardless of why society descriminates against them and we should always seek to support the utcast, the ones who suffer because of others' sociual priviliges. It's bad enough to be homophobic and descriminate but once you allow society down that path and let perversions like racism and homophobia create institutional favoritism it replaces our duty to the worst afflicted with the idea that they have no value. We blame the victims of our system's prejudices, blame them for reminding us of the guilt and flaws of the system, and instead of taking ownership of the wrongs and correcting them we'd rather hide them or kill them or let them die. We prolong and deepen people's suffering by denying their complaints and concerns and the AIDS epedemic is an awful example of the horrors of favoritism in health care. I watched another Bioneers program on the local super-cool public access station, this one was about legalizing dugs and the evil of the mentality that refuses to. He raised the example of the American response to the spread of HIV through the use of shared IV drug needles. Once people realized the connection most countries started a needle exchange program to give drug users clean needles to stem the epedemic, but America did not do this for many years, which resulted in much greater spread of the disease and many more unnessecary deaths. The American "reasoning" was that we can't support peoples' drug habits but as the speaker pointed out it does not even matter if you quit drugs or not if you die of AIDS and stopping the disease was more important than "not helping drug users in any way." Other countries recognized how it was a health concern, a common problem that affects us all and needs to be dealt with compassionately, but America has a worse streak of favoritism, of acting like only certain people matter and other people are condemned to die just because of their natures or prefrences or addictions. A lot of the focus of that presentation was about ending the drug war which is responsible for America imprisoning the most people by far and injustice that causes. But the really striking example of this favoritism allowing people to die, and the awful epedemic of AIDS to spread more, by refusing to provide needles, showed how the depths of how it hurts us. The mentality of complete uncaring towards IV drug users that mainstream America adopted based was this extreme favoritism, the idea that people's addictions made them unworthy to live, made them so far outside society their concerns don't matter, they should just die. And the same mentality was the mainstream and government response to the AIDS epedemic in the the gay community in America, it almost seemed as if the government and media just wanted to ignore it because if it killed off gay men and drug users they didn't care. I think our government was even worse, since I saw evidence in 1990 from a decade or so before that our congress approved a study to develop AIDS, and it is widely known that the epedemic was begun when a study of 5,000 "promiscuous" gay males were "accidentally" given the virus. To me this was an attempt to exterminate the gay community, just one of the worst things America did, up there with giving the Indians smallpox-infested blankets, the first biological warfare, that killed 200,000 people. There is no excuse for Russia or other countries to persecute gay people in modern times, and we still have favoritism and levels of persecution against them in America today, and it was only a generation ago that we at worst created an epedemic to kill them and at best turned a blind eye for years. This is such a glaring, terrible exampleof favoritism it should remind us to be on watch against it and eager to reverse favoritism wherever we discover it. In America we have plenty of examples, politically, as the Republican party continues to deny compassion for the problems of every "outsider" group - really all of the country besides themselves or who they imagine they are - women, the poor, gays, kids, minorities, immigrants, potsmokers and drugusers. Another example that came to mind, from an author I heard on NPR and saw on The Daily Show, who wrote "The Flash Boys" about High Frequency Traders on Wall Street who are given a favorable status, the ability to manipulate stocks in the milliseconds before everyone else sees them, which they can take advantage of with computers to skim money off of everything. It's just a big, legalized scam but it makes sense to develop such things because of the nature of money and the economic system, I mean it is the natural product of this evil focus on profits. You see the same aspect in all super-huge business, that gains governemt favor then gets out of control. The "Flash Boys" example is all about gaining the closest access and fleecing every other investor, and every business large and small as well, just completely exploiting the system based on having a favored status. I don't really care about money, or investment, but people who do should care about this. I do care about what this represents, how the richest companies have access and ability to change the way governments work and the information people get. The stock version is a very insidious, esoteric example - the whole idea is they make the workings of the stock market so complicated no one knows how it works and so no one knows they are doing this. But the same model occurs in every super-huge industry that gains control over the government that should have control over them, for the common good. Instead the common good is thwarted in the interests of their profits. The best companies are the ones that actually do the best for people. These High Frequency Traders don't seem to be doing anything for anyone, only for themselves - but even they aren't the worst, they aren't really hurting anyone as much as some of these other companies, they are just stealing - and maybe hurting people by deciding which companies prosper or fail. But mostly they are just theives, and the good news is apparently some people with conscience are setting up a rival exchange that does not have these loopholes for cheaters, which will surely replace the corrupt model as people learn about it all. But other companies are so much worse, either only caring about their own profits or only giving the appearance of helping people in the interests of their own profits. I can'r begin to name them all but he pharmacuetical companies and other health care companies and insurers come to mind. A less destructive example is cable companies, which would be kind of funny if we had universal internet access, but without it their unneccessary preices and services are kind of cruel. I just mention this because another commercial came on about DVRing 4 shows while you watch a fifth, and it made me think this is a perfect example of pretending to care for people's concerns and really just trying to find an excuse to sell more expensive stuff, and at some point there is a limit to how far that can go. Are there five shows at the same time we want to watch, or even one? Its just acting like what they are selling is a little better than it really is, and at some point this becomes obvious. The Ukrainian situation seems to be all about who gets to sell them oil, or jacking up the price ont them, cancelling their credit. It's all oil companies and the governments they control creating suffering for people for their own profits, and the American ones are just as guilty, from invading Iraq to attempting coups in Venezuela. The thing is, when they push us too far, we will revolt, like all people do when we are marginalized, oppressed, and exploited. The oil companies are the biggest companies ever, and the worst in a way, and they way they control governments, policy, and information makes them the worst example of favoritism. Their favor for their own profits threaten people all over the world and even threaten the continued existence of humanity on the planet. This was something else I saw on the Bioneers series on public access TV, a presentation about the "350" climate change protests around the world. I missed the beginning of it but its a group that went around the world to get people to protest the effects of global warming and climate change. Climate change is making everyone an outsider, a refugee, in favor of oil company profits. The presenter had writeen an article in Rolling Stone and said the editor called him because the Beibs was on the cover that month but his article got ten times the response. He had some scary information in the article that he mentioned, that at our current rate we will raise the planet's average temperature by two degrees in 15 more years and everyone agrees we can't survive that much change. Some of the first victims are in the Maldives, where the highest landpoint is only two meters above sea level, so in a matter of years it will all be underwater. But people suffer the effects of climate change everywhere, and even worse in places with less infratsructure to mitigate it, but as it gets more intense no one will be able to cope with it. And the whole reason we haven't already changed course and aren't already cleaning the planet instead of burning it up is because of the oil companies' influence and power, and the main obstacle to saving the planet is them. But they aren't going to wise up on their own, and the governments they bought were purchased specifically to keep them from stopping them, so it is up to us and massice public action. It's up to awareness and educating each other so that we take action. The most offensive commercials to me on TV right now, along with right-wing political ads but even worse, really, are the "learn about natural gas from the energy companies websites" ads. I just hope we are truly better than that and we can finally push off their influence and save the world, both from climate change and from war, both of which the oil companies and right-wing politics they control are responsible for. Even if it really comes down to Russia wants Ukraine bound to them because they want to make the money off selling them oil, well they can't go to war based on that. It is too obvious that it is only the interests of the oil companies and super-rich, not the interests of the people of the country, that are motivating them. Just like the appropriate response would cause some economic distress but mostly it would reveal how much the oil companies and weapons manufacturers are all in it together to protect their own business and get countries to fight each other to keep us from progressing past needing them. But Russia could not sell a war or invasion to it's people based on the idea that they needed to sell gas. they had to come up with some popular reason. Just like we could not say we were going to war with Iraq the first time to show off our weapons, or make them seem necessary after the collapse of the USSR, and we told Saddam we would not mind if he invaded Kuwait so that we could kill thousands in weapons advertising. The second time we invaded we could not just say it was Bush's revenge for a threat against his daddy, or a reckless power-grab, but came up with a story about WMDs to scare people into it. Well in Russia they apparently say Russian-speaking people in Ukraine are persecuted, but NPR had an example to disprove this. Apparently all RUssian-speaking people in Ukraine, at least those in younger generations, universally prefer watching the Simpsons in Ukranian to the Russian-dubbed version. This is just evidence that despite propoganda, people are bilingual in Ukraine and proud to be bilingual. They say the reason is because The Simpsons is funnier in Ukrainian, it sounds funnier and they have more colorful slang terms. They played a clip and I can say the Ukrainian version had an actress who sounded more Marge-y. This does not prove to me that there is no descrimination against Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, but it does suggest that people are bilingual and there is not as clear a divide as the propoganda suggests. The people interviewed in the report said as much, that there had been propoganda from Russia and also from Eastern Ukraine that there was descrimination against russian-speaking people, but that it was mostly propoganda to create conflict. I know I'm hearing a Western perspective, a BBC or NPR reporter's story, but I have faith in the Simpsons because to me they are an example of great art that seeks to expose the things the system might ignore, with compassion like a cartoon art version of the Good Shepherd. The pointed out that the show is older than the modern country of Ukraine as well, and to me the Simpsons are an example of how art can be so good it goes on forever, but governments won't. If there is descrimination against Russian-speaking people in Ukraine we should do something about it, just like we should do something about descrimination against people who speak Spanish or other languages in America, or who use sign language. But Russia has to be able to trust institutions to be good enough to address wrongs, and if they really cared about that, if they weren't just using it as an excuse, they would have just appealed to the international community. It took long enough but it looks like we finally got justice for the whales and Japan respected the international decision. We should trust each other, trust humanity, to be able to come together and make good decisions. We have to try to be aware, to reach out to those who are left out, educate each other aout problems we find and fix them. Any course we take that devalues another life or experience, or could result in killing people, is a sign we are on the wrong path. We have people who are thankfully showing us the way to turn everything around and create a paradise for everyone, and people who are standing in the way obsessed with their own self-interest, but we all can play a role. As Good Shepherds go out and reconnect everyone who is left out, who knows who will come up with the idea that makes all good dreams come true? I'm sure the Simpsons is not the only example of commonality between Ukrainian and Russian-speaking people in the Ukraine, and hopefully whatever descrimination there is will be alleviated now that people are paying more attention, but the Simpsons are a good example for bringing people together. One reason is because humor is one of the best way to cope with things and bring up difficult subjects, and Simpsons humor is actually compassionate and educates people, unlike Seth McFarlane cartoons that cash in on and deepen harmful stereotypes and ignorance. The Simpsons have been the lotus blossom on the shit-pool that is FOX ever since they were created, and they can serve as this liberating force in the case of the Ukriane, bringing people together and highlighting real experience, not sterotypes and propoganda. We have to have faith in each other to make things better, we haver to take action to do our part, and have faith in the world to magically support us in surprising ways. Maybe the Simpsons will ultimately have nothing or little to do with peace in the Ukraine, but the NPR story closed with something that makes me suspicious: they said that even though Russian-speaking people still prefer Ukrainian-dubbed SImpsons they have to download it, because there is no more Ukranian-dubbed Simpsons being broadcast in Ukraine, only Russian. To me, this sounds like desccrimination against Ukrainian-speaking people, not Russian! And they say they don't know why, but they do know the Ukrainian version was stopped five years ago, the same time the pro-Russian President Yanokovich, whom they just exposed and threw out, took over. Could it be that after this story they will start broadcasting Ukrainian Simpsons again, and another "light-side" news story following up on it could reveal that there is not really a linguistic divide in Ukraine? Could the Simpsons stop World War Three from starting? Well, something has to, why not?