LOVE RECHARGES LIFE'S BATTERIES

Okay, the "soul" is NOT your personality, so get that out of your head.  Far from it.

Each human being has innumerable personalities; for example, you have a distinct personality you use when taking a shower; you have another personality when sitting on the toilet; another when having sex; you use a different personality for talking to your mother-in-law, distinct from the one you use for talking to your mother or your wife or your husband. You have a VERY distinct SET of personalities for dealing with your children, your pets, your mailman, your minister. Your personality changes when sitting in your car, stuck in traffic, or driving through the countryside. Et cetera, et cetera. 

Humans ADAPT rapidly because we can assemble new personalities to fit a given moment.

That's why we must necessarily relegate "personality" to the material world. Personality is both a product of the material world and a versatile tool you use for dealing with the material world.

Personality, memory, and emotion are ALL corporeal components. That means they are NOT part of your Soul. The SOUL is your event horizon to the DIVINE. It stands apart from all of the cluttered mess of your daily living. It's that part of you that remains calm and indifferent and clear when things are at their very worst.

I know, I know, people are always saying "God is Love," but that's not true.  Or, rather, it's about as true as saying Schrödinger's cat is alive inside the box.  Because, you see, God must to be EVERYTHING to all people and to every creature in this Universe.  If God is Love, God is also the antithesis of Love, as well as all the degrees of Love and Hate.  If God is Good, God must also, necessarily, be Evil.  God is both the Yin and the Yang.  The Creator and Destroyer.

God is your Champion, but God is also your enemy.  God is Satan.  Sure, I can say that, and so can you.  Try it.

But that thing we call The Soul is your Divine core, it's a bubble of the Eleventh Dimension or something that is given access to this Universe at the very moment of your conception.  They say the eyes are the windows to the Soul, but you can take that a step further.

The Soul is the Window to God.

Why do you think Christ said, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (that's Matthew 18:20)...?

He was saying that in gathering and looking into the eyes of others, you are communing with God.

It's sort of like the weird department-store folding-mirror effect, okay?  You remember in the old days how the big department stores always had a full-length folding mirror, usually in the ladies' section, so they could ogle themselves wearing clothing right off the rack?  The two folding wings of the mirror allowed the women to view themselves from virtually every angle.

But, if you were a kid, you always wanted to position the folding mirrors facing one another, to reflect the mirror reflecting the mirror reflecting the mirror reflecting the mirror into infinity.  It annoyed my that I could never quite see infinity because my big head was always in the way, no matter how I tried to sneak-peek.

Well, that's the effect Christ was talking about when he said where two or three are gathered.  He was talking about looking into each other's eyes, into Infinity.  That's where Christ, God and the Holy Spirit reside.

Interestingly, Science HATES the notion of Infinity.  They really hate it.  See, Infinity screws up all their majestic mathematical constructs that are dependent on a FINITE Universe.  That's why the atheist astrophysicist Stephen Hawking refuses to hypothesize on what happened BEFORE the Big Bang — because mathematics don't work before the existence of the Space-Time continuum.

Mathematics don't work after the end of the Universe, either.  Same with the interior of so-called Black Holes, where physics shatter to pieces in ways that mathematics can't begin to describe.

So, for the hardboiled astrophysicists such as Stephen Hawking, there's NOTHING before and NOTHING after the Universe.  Physicists just won't go there, because it's pure fantasy.  It's Infinity.  It's Magic and make a wish and "that does not compute" time.

Yeah, too bad old Albert Einstein left so many equations open-ended like that, with a vulgar Infinity symbol at the very last.

But, see, that's where our big heads get in the way, like the kid with the department store mirrors, so we can't sneak a peek nor comprehend Infinity in the least.

But Christ said you CAN comprehend Infinity, when two or three people gather together and look into each other's eyes and REALIZE that they are actually looking through the windows of the Soul and into Infinity, into the Realm of God.

Conversely, the Soul is God's window into our Universe.  And, yes, everything has a Soul, even the most unlikely things.  When you read in Matthew 10:29 "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father," Christ is saying, of course, that even the lowliest and most common creatures are under God's watchful eye.

But he's saying more than that.

He's saying that God knows when even a sparrow dies, because a tiny little window into our Universe is closed.  God sees into our Universe through our Souls, yes?  Well, of course, yes.

That's why God insists that everything be fruitful and multiply, that He might gaze upon His creation with constantly-replenished eyes.

Oh, about the title.... Love Recharges Life's Batteries is just an impish slogan I dreamed up for possible use on T-shirts, coffee cups, crap like that.  I wasn't going sappy on you.

GET YOUR FILL OF POLITICAL RHETORIC AT WWW.ZESKOWHIRLIGAN.COM

Well, since I posted the last two blogs, I've received over 1200 views in the last 48 hours.

Which is good, in a sense; however, I never intended this blog to turn into a political torture chamber.  Not that I'm opposed to torture chambers, necessarily, but Zesko Knows is supposed to be several magnitudes more intelligent than any sounding board of political rhetoric.

In fact, I wrote a book a couple of years ago — Toxic Reign: Reclaim Our Future — that lambasted the Central Government Liberal Mainstream Media; and, for my efforts, I was publicly identified as a purveyor of violent speech by the Anti-Defamation League.

Imagine that.

No, I didn't sue the ADL — they've devolved into a mean-spirited organization of politically-correct, anti-American, anti-Constitution trolls who are just as bad as the Anti-Semites and Nazis they pretend to loathe; and that's enough karmic justice, in my opinion.

So, while I'm not going to remove the last two political entries from Zesko Knows, I just want to alert you that I'm not going to make similar politically-inflammatory entries on this particular site in the future.

Rather, I'll be posting purely political commentary on my OTHER blog, www.ZeskoWhirligan.com — otherwise known as Toxic Reign — which is specifically dedicated to political rhetoric; plus, there are links to switch back and forth between the two blogs, so you won't get lost.

Let's be clear, while I don't mind discussing politics in an educational way here at Zesko Knows, I don't want this blog to become a forum for political shit-slinging.  You'll get enough of that at Toxic Reign, I promise you.

THE LIBERAL LEFT'S VULGAR ABUSE OF WOMEN

Here's a premium bit of Liberal hypocrisy, in direct counterpoint to the media-fueled Limbaugh/Fluke controversy.

The angry liberal Bill Maher — who's just another media personality regularly commenting on Washington politics, as does Rush Limbaugh — is known and even CELEBRATED by his Liberal audience for his vulgar and violent insults against women. 

Maher regularly refers to women as boobs, bimbos, cunts, twats and much worse. Indeed, Maher is recognized as, perhaps, the most misogynistic personality in American media. He is famously known for referring to Sarah Palin as a "dumb twat," which brought gales of laughter and applause from his Liberal audience. 

Will Obama Return Misogynist Bill Maher's Million-Dollar Donation?

In response to the media firestorm surrounding Rush Limbaugh's insulting comments about Democratic activist Sandra Fluke (comments for which Limbaugh apologized), Kirsten Powers writes about the liberal men who have used misogynistic rhetoric without facing the same outrage. Powers notes that "the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC." She continues:

Maher has called Palin a “dumb twat” and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He said of the former vice-presidential candidate, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.”  He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. 

Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job.

Although Congressional Democrats are currently URGING Sandra Fluke to sue Rush Limbaugh for slander and libel, there has never been a Congressional recommendation for Sarah Palin to sue Bill Maher. 

Rather, and in spite of Maher's truly offensive language toward women, Barack Obama's re-election campaign has ACCEPTED a MILLION DOLLAR donation from Bill Maher. Apparently, there's no controversy in the Liberal-controlled media AT ALL when one of their OWN misogynists attacks women.

Do you seriously think that Barack Obama is going to wax righteous and REFUSE Maher's donation?  Hell no, he won't.  Because whatever advances Barack Obama's re-election — be it misogyny, racism, socialism, whatever — is FINE with Obama and with his hypocritical, mean-spirited supporters.

This Liberal hypocrisy reminds me in a profound way of the Liberal ACCEPTANCE of Bill Clinton's abuse of women before and during his presidency in the 1990s.

Oh, the Liberals thought Bill Clinton was WONDERFUL, even though he abused and raped women and referred to his female victims as "trailer trash"... Did the National Organization for Women come to the defense of Paula Jones or Gennifer Flowers or Monica Lewinsky (who represent just a FRACTION of Bill Clinton's adulterous sexual conquests)? 

More importantly, did NOW hurry to offer moral support to Clinton's WIFE, Hillary, who looked like a complete and compliant fool? 

Hell no, they didn't. The National Organization for Women was TOTALLY silent throughout Bill Clinton's worst sexual scandals. It was a travesty that permanently tarnished NOW's credibility.

But, again, THAT'S how Liberals work in America. Women and churches and moral compasses be DAMNED, as far as Liberals are concerned.

THE LIBERAL LEFT'S RUSH TO JUDGMENT

As usual, the angry and uninformed Liberal Left rises up on its hind legs in righteous indignation, barking their preposterous and inappropriate opinions upon a subject about which they are utterly ignorant...

Congressional Democrats Urge Sandra Fluke to SUE Rush Limbaugh

The Georgetown Law student whom Rush Limbaugh called a "slut" ought to sue him for libel, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Sunday.

The House’s second-ranking Democrat said Sandra Fluke, who was swept up in a national furor when Limbaugh called her a “slut” and a “prostitute” because of her stance on contraceptives, needs to explore legal options against the radio host, Hoyer said. A Georgetown Law grad himself, Hoyer called Limbaugh's comment "reprehensible."

"I'd like to see her take him to court," Hoyer said, according to a report in the Montgomery Advertiser. “She is not a public figure and, for that reason, she should be able to sue for slander, libel or whatever else might be involved." See also: Rush on air: Apology was heartfelt.

Fluke was thrust into the national spotlight when she wasn’t allowed to testify in front of a congressional hearing on the Obama administration’s contraception rule. She spoke before an informal Democratic hearing late last month about the need for easier access to birth control, prompting Limbaugh’s remarks.

Rush Limbaugh owes NOBODY an apology, least of all a woman who EXPECTS religious institutions to abandon their long-held stances on contraception and FINANCE her choice of (frequent) birth control.

The young, unmarried law student who actually went before Congress to lament her inability to control her sexual urges is typical of the Lefties out there who, in their ignorance, believe THEIR INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR should be defended by the government, even at the expense of the Church.

You DO KNOW that this is the CRUX of the matter, right?

Fluke is nothing but the latest hood ornament for the Liberal campaign to FORCE religious institutions (such as the Jesuit school that Miss Fluke attends) to carry student insurance that covers expensive contraception costs. So, instead of respecting the MORAL BASIS of religious institutions, Miss Fluke and her supporters (such as Nancy Pelosi, a self-described Catholic) are demanding that the federal government intercede and FORCE these institutions to supply contraception (and abortion, too, eventually) against their beliefs.

Yes, Miss Fluke, who is a law student AND a feminist activist for government-funded birth control, has an agenda. She's not in need of $3000 per year in birth control pills and other birth control measures. Miss Fluke was CHOSEN by the Liberal Left in Congress to argue against the Church. If there's any doubt that this is a Liberal publicity stunt, consider that Miss Fluke wasn't even going to speak before Congressional hearings on the matter until Nancy Pelosi convened her OWN, SEPARATE HEARING for Miss Fluke's benefit, OUTSIDE of the official hearings on the subject.

Yes, Miss Fluke's little righteously indignant adventure into the limelight is a PUBLICITY STUNT, organized and perpetrated by the Liberal Left in Congress.

This is EXACTLY like the HOAX perpetrated by the National Organization for Women in the early 1970s, USING Norma McCorvey (under the pseudonym of Jane Roe) as a hood ornament for the campaign for legal (and frequent) abortion, protected and financed by the federal government. Norma McCorvey wasn't even pregnant, had no NEED for an abortion, but she and the National Organization for Women perpetrated a LIE — a LIE that she WAS pregnant and had been denied an abortion — all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is how Liberals OPERATE in America, folks. When they can't have their way, they INVENT characters and plaintiffs and issues out of thin air, and FORCE them down America's throat.

The fact is, Miss Fluke doesn't NEED contraceptives, because no man would touch her with a seven-inch pole; and that's because she's a mean-spirited, Liberal Leftist political activist. Which probably means she's a lesbian, as well.

No, I won't apologize for my skilled deduction, and Rush Limbaugh doesn't owe Miss Fluke and her political HACKS in Congress an apology, either.

As for Mr. Limbaugh's sponsors (very few of whom are actually pulling their advertising from his show), I would hasten to remind you that Mr. Limbaugh's SPONSORS didn't make him famous — he did that HIMSELF, because he KNOWS HOW to play these little political games, and he knows what he's doing right now... He's pushing buttons to increase his own visibility. Plain and simple. If there's one thing the Liberal Left should have learned by now, it's that you DON'T go after Rush Limbaugh, because he'll turn it to his own benefit, and he'll be more famous than ever.

YET ANOTHER DOOMSDAY SCENARIO

Oh, boy, here we go again...

Massive Asteroid Threatens Earth in 2013

NASA's data shows the 60-meter asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, will whistle by Earth in 11 months. Its trajectory will bring it within a hair’s breadth of our planet, raising fears of a possible collision. 

The asteroid, known as DA14, will pass by our planet in February 2013 at a distance of under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is closer than the geosynchronous orbit of some satellites.

There is a possibility the asteroid will collide with Earth, but further calculation is required to estimate the potential threat and work out how to avert possible disaster,

Look, before you rush to construct an asteroid-proof bunker and stock it with incontinence diapers, please TRY to keep this discovery in perspective.

The 2012 DA14 asteroid is only 60 meters wide (about 180 feet).  An asteroid only 180 feet in its maximum dimension is about 1/3 the size of the Canyon Diablo Meteor (which created Meteor Crater in Winslow, Arizona, about 50,000 years ago).  The Canyon Diablo Meteor is estimated to have been about 500 feet in diameter, and the crater (as it appears today) is only about a mile in diameter.

Yeah, if DA14 strikes Earth next February, it'll release about as much energy as a low-yield thermonuclear weapon, which will be quite noticeable if it impacts any land mass.  However, the Earth's surface is over 70% WATER, which means the asteroid has less than a 30% chance of impacting dry land.

I've got news for you, folks, and NASA can back this up, as can NORAD: The Earth's oceans have received more than a couple of meteors of this size before, and within the last hundred years.  NORAD has to be on constant vigil for these meteoric visitors, so we don't mistake them for actual nuclear detonations and launch a counterstrike on somebody.

Did you get that?  Earth gets hit by these asteroids fairly REGULARLY, and they fizzle into the oceans without much fanfare.  No worldwide apocalypse, no nuclear winter, not even a respectable tsunami results from these impacts.

Now, if a 180-foot meteor managed to impact a populated land mass, it might take out a very small town or do a lot of damage in a major city.  It would be pretty sensational news, but it wouldn't be any worse than the damage caused by an F5 tornado, okay?  Sure, an F5 tornado is pretty frightening to contemplate, but only in a very limited and localized sense, and it would never threaten humanity's existence.

It's when asteroids reach several MILES in size that they cause global disturbances.  And, just for the record, the notion that a 6-mile meteor exterminated the dinosaurs is just a sensational THEORY.  There's no hard evidence that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs but inexplicably didn't exterminate the much more fragile amphibians.  It's a more likely theory that communicable DISEASE killed off the dinosaurs, not some overblown Hollywood horror such as an asteroid.

THE MIRACULOUS: FACT AND FAKERY

I want to talk about The Miraculous.

We know that Creation is a miracle. Don't we?  It's an ongoing miracle, it's still happening, it embraces us, it permeates us, we waltz through it daily, we take it for granted because, ultimately, it is granted to us.

No, we don't appreciate The Miracle because we're obsessed with our collection of what we think are the priorities in Life, and the luxuries that we manufacture for ourselves, and the scandals that we manufacture for ourselves, and the global crises that we manufacture for ourselves.

See, we're so shamelessly narcissistic that we imagine everything mighty and magnificent and glorious only exists for our amusement.  We imagine that we can take it or leave it.

That's what distinguishes us from the other creatures of this world.  This is what got us kicked out of Eden, right?  We were banished from living in harmony with Nature because we aspired to perceiving it as God perceives it.  God knows how Nature works, he knows how it's put together — and when we acquired the awareness of God, we acquired an unnatural curiosity to take Nature apart.  We have the same base impulses as animals, but we have the curiosity of God.

Which makes us unique.  It makes us the ultimate misfits.

See, animals know that God exists, and animals are fully aware of the hierarchy of spirit.  Animals are so tuned-in to the tremulous vibes that events in other dimensions affect them profoundly.  We know that animals anticipate natural disasters, that's just a fact.  But animal sensitivity extends beyond the physical world.  Hundreds of birds of one species drop dead in flight, and they fall to earth.  A shoal of fish of one species go belly up, dying simultaneously for no apparent reason.  Happens all the time.

It's as if the Life force was just sucked out of them.  But it's the precise selection of species that is the marvel — it's not as if some natural force is just blindly sucking the Life out of everything in the area.  There's a surgical precision in these mini-extinction-events.

What is that?  Science has no answer.

All Science can do is attempt to give us perspective.  That's all.

When we think we've discovered something new and we think we know something new, what we've actually done is built a little model of that thing in our minds, and there it becomes an object of admiration and pride, because we think we understand that model.  We have now drawn that model within our perspective of reality.

When we present our discovery to others for their approval, they hold it at arm's length and turn it over and scrutinize it from every angle, and they KNOW that model exists, because their minds comprehend the same details we comprehend.

So, we agree on Reality.  Therefore, the model is "real" and it becomes a working bit of our knowledge base.

The Miraculous, however, cannot be reduced to a model that we can understand or manipulate or place in a museum display case.  The Miraculous defies Nature, just as WE defy Nature.  That's why we suspect that The Miraculous is the result of intelligent interference.  That's why The Miraculous implies God.

That's why Science detests The Miraculous.  The Miraculous refuses to be measured, it refuses to cooperate with our four-dimensional models of Reality.

You know, one of the greatest men I knew many years ago was a magician.  Not a sorcerer or anything like that, but a stage magician, a sleight of hand artist, a practitioner of theatrical magic, which certainly can be explained in four-dimensional terms.  He not only performed magic, he collected all sorts of magic tricks — thousands of tricks, some very ancient and some very modern, but all predicated on the fact that human attention can be reliably misled.

One night after enjoying dinner in his home, this magician offered to reveal to me the secret of any one magic trick I chose.  This was a marvelous gift, but I was at a loss to choose one magic trick from among the many I had seen him perform in the past.  Finally, I said, "How do you pierce a balloon with a knitting needle without popping the balloon?"

This one trick had always baffled me from a physics standpoint.  The magician produces a latex balloon, inflates it, ties it off, and then drives a foot-long knitting needle right through the balloon as easily as inserting it through a melon. The balloon remains intact. The trick is so simple and so in-your-face, your brain immediately goes into high gear trying to solve it.

How do you stick ANYTHING through a balloon without popping it?

He chuckled at my simple inquiry, because I could have asked him about ANY trick.  I mean, I could have asked about Houdini's Metamorphosis and it would have been revealed to me that night.  But I wasn't interested in the Metamorphosis, which is more a feat of timing than anything else.  I was interested in the straight-up physical impossibility of a knitting needle stabbed through a balloon.

The magician stepped to his cabinet, withdrew the necessary props, and rejoined me at the table.  He laid out the objects for me to see and said, "the secret is right in front of you."  There was a balloon and a glinting knitting needle upon a red silk kerchief.  I picked up each of the items and inspected them carefully.  They were unremarkable, except that the silk kerchief felt a little greasy.

"That's the secret," the magician smiled.  A red silk kerchief, which already has a pleasing sheen to the naked eye, is the vehicle for a small quantity of machine grease worked into the fabric.  The knitting needle is dramatically unwrapped from the greased kerchief, and with very graceful handling, the needle is coated all the way to the tip with a film of grease.

The knitting needle is then plunged right through the balloon, in one side and out the other, and the grease serves to seal the puncture, so no air escapes, explosively or otherwise.

Simple physics.  It was a middle-school physics experiment.  I felt incredibly stupid, but also enlightened.

See, Magic is REAL in its performance, the EFFECT it has on the audience is REAL.  How very wonderful to be able to impart that feeling of awe and wonder to hundreds and thousands and millions of people simply by making a few simple physical preparations and presenting the EFFECT as Magic.

This is one reason I've always preferred to work in the background, participating in elaborate preparations that culminate in simple and straightforward presentations.  It's like the magic of the theatre, right?  Behind the various curtains and backdrops, there's a veritable mob of people hurrying to and fro, moving property here and there, adjusting lighting and sound and effects, all to create an illusion of a moment in time out there on the stage.

I've always enjoyed being the man behind the curtain.

But in the cases of select species of animals just dropping dead en masse, or of fish and crabs and frogs and all sorts of unlikely things miraculously falling out of the sky (and in absence of convenient meteorological explanations), I think there are elaborate preparations going on in other dimensions, a lot of covert stagecraft behind the miraculous events we see in the world around us.

Am I saying that miraculous events are faked?  Oh, no, they may surely answer every criteria of our most stringent inquiry.  I'm saying that what we perceive as miracles in our Universe are actually fairly mundane interdimensional events; but, when they intrude into our Universe, and we see only, perhaps, three or four facets of an extraordinarily multifaceted event, we simply have no faculty to grasp or comprehend the true nature of what has transpired.

Look at the Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal, 1917.

It was foretold, and some 100,000 people were on hand to witness the Miraculous events, among them scientists and journalists and photographers.  Yes, it happened.  That it happened isn't in question.  But WHAT happened, truly?

How could the SUN apparently move closer to the Earth, such that witnesses saw the disc grow larger and felt the temperature increase accordingly?

Pardon, but if the Sun was jostled around like that, even for a few seconds, it would produce gravity waves that would still be reverberating around this arm of the galaxy.  The known planets would leave their orbits, go sailing off into the void like ghost ships, or assume new, strange, elliptical orbits.  The Asteroid and Kuiper Belts would be affected, and great slabs of rock and ice would come tumbling into the inner Solar System.   Who knows what else would result from the Sun playing hopscotch around the solar system?

Well, then, it was the EARTH that moved closer to the Sun, right?

Again, impossible.  We're talking about taking a binary planet system (Earth/Moon is a binary planet system) off of its orbit and plunging it toward the Sun at the center of the Solar System.  Obviously, that didn't happen.  The velocities involved would strip away Earth's atmosphere in seconds, the tidal forces would launch the oceans out of their basins and into space, where they would turn into an icy, comet-like tail swirling away for millions of miles.

Ever heard of Occam's Razor?

Using Occam's Razor, we can very quickly eliminate the possibility that the Earth or Sun deviated in their exquisitely-balanced cosmic gyrations, and we arrive at the much more simple and energy-efficient explanation that 100,000 witnesses (scientists and journalists inclusive) had their PERCEPTION influenced by an external source.

A cosmic magic trick.  Sleight of hand on a titanic scale.  A Miracle.

Something punched through from another dimension and 100,000 four-dimensional brains tried to make sense of it.  Oh, there was definitely a physical effect, no question.   They captured images of the Miracle of the Sun.

But what really transpired there?

Naysayers will tell you that these throngs of people assembled over an area of 18 miles in Portugal's countryside and stared at the sun until their brains were fried and they started hallucinating.

O my Lord, thou hast set the Sun spinning in the heavens, casting every colour upon the land, and the zig and the zag thing, as thou wouldst, as we cower, yes, the mighty Sun doest make the wet bits dry, in thy mercy! Lo!

Occam's Razor works on naysayers, too.

No, something happened.  It was captured on film and in thousands of witness accounts.   Wet clothing was instantly dried.  Wet, muddy earth was made dry in ten minutes.  Moisture, it seems, was drawn away at the event horizon.

No trees burst into flame, thankfully.  But you can imagine the frenzy of the crowds as SOMETHING increased the outdoor temperature sufficiently to dehydrate rain-drenched clothing and muddy earth?

In ten minutes?

Well... If I may observe.  What do we know that would split sunlight into its spectra, sending flashes of every color?  A prism?  I've played with glass lenses that were crafted to filter light into myriad colors.  The disc of the Sun was also seen to move about erratically in the sky, and seemed to come closer to the Earth than normal.

Somebody playing with a cosmic magnifying lens, maybe?

Why not?  If someone wanted to make an impression on 100,000 people in the Portuguese countryside, I think a display of focusing the Sun's rays on the Earth through a tremendous lens (positioned in Space, of course) would scare the living shit out of anyone.  Even hardened skeptics and atheists.

As Arthur C. Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.

I think that something extraordinary transpired on that day in Portugal, and I think its explanation is as incredible as its effect.  Some agency unknown to Man positioned a lens of some sort near the Earth so as to create a solar spectacle, complete with prismatic displays of color, as well as an increase in temperature sufficient to evaporate a great quantity of rainwater in a matter of minutes.

Like a boy playing with a magnifying glass, roasting the frantic population of an anthill.

Like that, but not precisely so.  The Miracle of the Sun was foretold, not in exact terms, but the Virgin advised that something was going to happen.  So it was a controlled event.  No one was roasted alive, and no trees burst into flame, but wet clothing and soggy earth were dried, which indicates very precise control of the effect.

The Magician was quite careful not to injure his audience.  The Miracle of Fatima was a demonstration of power, yes?  Power and Control on a scale that dwarfs Mankind's best efforts to insignificance.  I mean, we couldn't replicate the Miracle of the Sun if we wanted to.

The best magicians in the world can deceive an audience at close range, but when it comes to creating a spectacle with intense radiant heat over an area of 18 miles, and visible to an audience of a hundred thousand spread out across the countryside, I defy the best magicians in the world to replicate the effect.

I defy them.

The engineering and orchestration of such an event is Miraculous; even in its explanation it's Miraculous.  It would require the technology of an extremely advanced civilization, far beyond our current capability to harness and focus energies in that way.  For all practical purposes, it would require a God.

But... What if there was an advanced civilization capable of pulling off this magic trick?  From where?  From the Pleiades?  Oh, please.

I'm not going to leap immediately to extraterrestrial explanations, okay, because I don't think that's necessary.  There's plenty of terrain to support a number of civilizations on this planet.  We just happen to occupy the outermost layer of its rocky crust.

Yeah, I do seriously think that there's another civilization that coexists with us on this planet.  A civilization several million years more technically advanced than us, and it is located about 20 miles straight down.

No, the Earth isn't hollow.  But there is a sweet spot about 20 miles below the surface where a sufficiently sophisticated species could carve out a place for itself.  Indeed, an intelligent species would know that you can survive virtually unscathed for billions of years deep below the surface of a rocky planet covered with water.

Survive asteroid strikes, survive gamma bursts, survive super solar flares, survive ANYTHING.

That would be a species that flies in and out of the oceans and atmosphere as easily as stepping out the front door and onto the porch.

They own the planet, of course.  They've always owned it.  And, yes, they're entirely capable of engineering and orchestrating a Miracle of Fatima to keep our species moving in a desired direction.  Whatever direction that is.  A direction that pleases them, perhaps, or that serves them.

Certainly, if there is one subterranean civilization there can be two subterranean civilizations.  In fact, if you have one extremely advanced civilization, it IS going to SPLIT after a few million or billion years.  There is going to be schism in any intelligent community.  Fact of life (and another story).  Intelligent communities split, they divide, and divide again.

So, I think there's TWO subterranean civilizations on Earth.  At least.

But THAT is the fodder for another blog altogether.

ROBOT ATTACK FROM THE YEAR SIXTY-EIGHT!

I don't want to make this a regular thing, but I'd like to lay down a few more impressions of how my childhood shaped my life.  I say impressions rather than memories, because, while I remember all the details of my childhood with excruciating clarity, I'm going to focus only upon those incidents that turned me into what I am today.  These impressions are still influencing me.

Let's take a jog back to 1968, to my grade school years, spent marveling at the possibilities of those things yet to come, spent reading science-oriented books and magazines and fiction of the day, spent reading about 10 books a week, actually.  And, yes, I could give an impromptu and comprehensive report on the contents of any book stuffed into my bulging satchel.  I was 8 years old.

One of my grade school teachers was a Mrs. Spears, a great big-boned woman with a broad, smiling face and ruddy cheeks and a spreading bough of hair like copper wire on top of her head and sparkling green eyes — I always thought she was one of us, I thought she was a kid at heart.  Rumor held that she was a Morman, which was something highly unusual in southeast Texas in the 60s.  But, then, Mormans are highly unusual people to begin with.

Mrs. Spears' class was a pleasure to me because every Wednesday she would close the door and draw the blinds — thus eliminating any external distractions — and pull up a sturdy wooden chair before the class and sit down and open a book and read to us from it.  Her choice of literature was eclectic, to put it mildly, and very much unpredictable, but definitely the sort of stuff to stimulate a young mind.

I recall one book in particular, A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, which had won a number of awards and was a fairly sophisticated book for eight-year-old kids to digest back in 1968.  It was about a young girl's quest to rescue her father who was trapped in another dimension.  It seems the girl and her father shared an inherited trait that allowed them to cross over physical dimensions, to travel in time by sheer willpower, right.

That's a pretty complex concept, even by the standards of modern physicists.

Mrs. Spears read a few chapters to us each Wednesday from that story, then opened the class for discussion.  I remember she asked us to imagine the year 2000, what it would be like, and she wanted us to write about it and then talk about what we wrote.

Well... I already had my own notions about Time Travel back then.   In fact, I'd been pondering an unconventional means of communicating across Time.  As I sat in Mrs. Spears class, listening to the other kids babbling about flying cars and laser guns and all that nonsense, I thought that there must be a way to discern the true nature of the future, if only I had a telephone that would allow me to call myself in the future and ask a few questions.

I figured, in order to see into the future, all I had to do was mentally link up with myself at a future date.  Establish a mind link across time, right?

While all the other kids were bumbling around in their Star Trek-induced fantasies, I was musing upon interdimensional communications.  I remember becoming completely detached from the noisy scene in the school cafeteria, gazing out the window on an exceptionally clear and sunny day, TRYING to contact myself in the future.

Did I tell anyone about it?  Oh, no, you must be kidding.  They would've thought I "needed treatment," and I was smart enough to avoid treatment all throughout my life.  Yeah, I saw a few counselors who determined that I had "anger issues," but they were utterly wrong in their diagnoses.

See, when a psychiatric counselor observes a child drawing pictures of monsters all the time, as I did, they tend to think it's an anger issue.  No, I wasn't angry, the fact was that I LIKED monsters, I loved the misfits, I loved asymmetry, and I enjoyed the horrified expressions upon the faces of those who encountered monsters.  In my mind, every monster is just a kid who stepped on an anthill, right?  An outsider in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Anybody can be a monster.

Monsters shatter the illusion that everything is normal and pleasant and comfortable.  It's a matter of perspective, who's a monster and who's not.

Anyway, I remember trying to send these mental "gifts" to myself in the future.  And it worked.

In the year 2000, after 32 years of decidedly carnal living, after drinking my ass off for 23 years following my father's death in 1977, after living like a goddamned heathen berserker, wrecking property and maliciously injuring those closest to me, after surviving that den of iniquity in Florida and returning like the prodigal son, something hit me.

I mean, it really hit me like a wallop — suddenly, out of nowhere, I had this resurgence of passion for toy robots.

As a little kid, I loved toy robots, and dinosaurs, and all the usual stuff that 8-year-old boys love.  My passion for robots went a bit deeper than most in that I disassembled and modified and reassembled robots, trying to make them do things they weren't designed to do.

I lived for robots, I dreamed about robots, my first job mowing lawns was one of many labors in an Arthurian quest to obtain a ROBOT on lay-away at Goggin and Gorman's Toy Store.

In my 8-year-old mind, I had constructed a virtual reality populated by anthropomorphic robots, pursuing their various missions across space and time, okay?  I cogitated upon robotic scenarios.  Robots meant a lot to me back then.

But that childhood obsession, like so many others, fell away as adolescence descended and The System's mandatory education drones attempted to breach my intellectual perimeter.  In short, I forgot all about robots for 32 long years.

Then, wham, in 2000 comes this all-consuming passion to collect robots.  Out of nowhere.  Except, boom, look back to 1968 and that little kid in the school cafeteria peering out the window on a sunny day, trying to send a message with his mind into the future.

It worked.  It works.  And it works both ways, I think, but more on that later.