Tom Chavez

Kaṁsa's Forceful Power Stymied

When the baby girl cried, the guards awoke and informed Kaṁsa, who quickly arrived. Devakī begged him, “My dear brother, please do not kill this girl. The omen was that you are to be killed by a male child. I beg you to let her live as my daughter.”

With no pity for Devakī. Kaṁsa forcibly grabbed the newborn child and attempted to dash her on the stone. But she slipped from his hands and flew into the sky, transforming herself into the eight-armed sister of Viṣṇu. 

The goddess warned Kaṁsa, “You rascal, how can you kill me? The child who will kill you is already born elsewhere. Don’t be so cruel to your poor sister.” Then she disappeared.

Kaṁsa immediately released Vasudeva and Devakī and tearfully apologized, “I have acted like a demon and deserve to go to the hell. The celestial prophecy was fake news. But I believed it, and committed many atrocities. Please forgive me.”

Devakī calmed down and Vasudeva said, “My dear brother-in-law, we are all born ignorant and hence create enmity or friendship, thinking that the body is our self.” Vasudeva gently enlightened Kaṁsa, who felt relief from his guilt.

Gregg Wilson

Tom,

Possibly.

The salt layer tells us the Pharaoh Khufu did NOT build the Great Pyramid. Secondly, it tells us that there was a Great Flood - as told in the Holy Bible.

For readers of religious interest:

Enoch, the great grandfather of Noah, is mentioned a few times in the Holy Bible. However, his books were not allowed to be in Holy Bible. Within his books it is stated that God commissioned Enoch to build the Great Pyramid. This is a very long time before Noah.

Why?

Tom Chavez

The Turing Test—“Can machines think?”

    The British mathematician Alan Turing asked, “Can machines think?” The 2014 movie “The Imitation Game” portrayed Turing’s role in cracking the Nazi’s Enigma machine codes during WWII.

    Turing proposed a computer program, ‘The Imitation Game’, to imitate human behavior. This became the Turing test,  a test of a computer’s ability to fool people into thinking that the computer was also human. 

    Many computers have passed the test. In 1972 Kenneth Colby developed the PARRY program to mimic paranoid schizophrenics. Professional psychiatrists were unable to distinguish between PARRY and human patients.

    Nowadays large businesses use ‘chatbot’ programs to deal with customers. Politicians use chatbots on social media to influence elections.

    Not only can machines think, they can be crazy and diabolical, too. With machines like that, who needs humans?

The good news, Tom, is that the computer passed the 

Turing test. The bad news is that you failed.

Tom Chavez

Machines Outthink Humans

Computers can, without sweat, defeat the best human chess champions. In 2017 the program AlphGo, developed by Google DeepMind, defeated Korean world go champion Ke Jie repeatedly. 

In August this year, DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution program hosted an F-16 fighter jet combat competition. An artificial intelligence algorithm easily defeated a professional fighter pilot in virtual dogfight competition every time.

Clearly, properly programmed machines can outthink humans. Are we becoming obsolete? Not really. The machines depend upon humans to program them and keep them up and running. Humans have many capabilities that machines lack.

A machine can easily be built to perceive a red light and declare, “I see a red light.” But does it consciously perceive the “redness of red”? Does AlphaGo or the dogfight algorithm feel the ecstasy of victory over its opponent?

Machines unquestionably can be programmed to think, but can they be programmed to be conscious?

Robert Bramel

Amazing Covid Study!

A scholarly paper in preprint reports giving large doses of Vitamin D to Covid hospital patients cut the need for patients to go to ICU by a factor of 50!

76 consecutive people hospitalized for Covid were all given the same standard of care; a random selection of 50 were also periodically given a form of vitamin D, while 26 were not. Only one of the fifty (2%) later went to ICU (no one died.) Half of the control group ended up in ICU and one died.

(“Univariate Risk Estimate Odds Ratio for ICU in patients with Calcifediol treatment versus without Calcifediol treatment: 0.02 (95%CI 0.002-0.17).” WOW!!

My opinion: Get your vitamin D serum level up above 30 ng/ml.

Here is a link to the free preprint.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764?via%3Dihub

Tom Chavez

Despite its name, vitamin D is not a vitamin, but a prohormone, or precursor of a hormone.

Vitamins are nutrients that the body cannot create. 

However, Vitamin D can be synthesized in adequate amounts by most mammals if exposed to sufficient sunlight.

We can also boost vitamin D intake through certain foods or supplements.

Don’t wait until you are infected. Get sunshine as best you can now. Sunscreen not recommended.

Tom Chavez

How to Escape an Erupting Volcano

    After the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization around 1150 BC, new civilizations sprang up, among which the Roman Empire was prominent. One Roman town, Pompeii, was obliterated in a day—August 24, 79 AD—when a 5.9 magnitude earthquake was followed by Mt. Vesuvius ejecting 1.5 million tons of molten rock per second with 100,000 times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. 

    Mt. Vesuvius was six miles from Pompeii. When the volcano first cracked open it was like popping the cork on a gargantuan bottle of champagne. Dissolved gases rushed out of pressurized magma beneath Vesuvius through the volcanic vent, blowing lava ash and gas miles high, sucking and heating the surrounding air to create a light, hot cloud rising into the atmosphere. The Vesuvius eruption was about the size of Mount Saint Helen’s eruption of 1980.

    Escape was possible only during the first few hours after the eruption while the ejecta and heat were high in the atmosphere. Many Pompeiians sheltered in place, a deadly mistake. After the first explosion, the pressure reduced and a dense cloud of ash and gas flowed down the mountainside at race car speed. Such “pyroclastic flows” are searingly hot and suffocating. A few hours after the eruption everyone remaining in Pompeii was dead.

    The best chance to escape a volcano is to immediately flee as fast as possible, but not downwind! Those who fled Vesuvius downwind were caught by the deadly flow pushed by the wind. Lava is not an issue because lava is thick and viscous, up to 100 million times as viscous as water. Unless you are on a very steep slope, you can easily evade a lava flow. 

    Vesuvius had erupted and killed thousands 2,000 years earlier in 1995 BC, but the Pompeiians did not know. Danger can pop up anywhere at any time, like the wildfires now scorching the west coast. There is no material solution for permanent safety or security in this world. Those who are wise seek a spiritual solution to transcend samsara, the cycle of repeated birth and death. This is the best and only true escape.

Tim Jones (Jones)

I'll try to remembe your advice, Tom, when Rainier lets go.

I did tour Pompeii in 2005. Was impressed mostly how sophisticated and large the city was (is). Fast food vendors on the street corners. Tile murals, huge amphitheater. And deep grooves worn in the cobble streets by carts with wooden wheels. How long does that take?   

Not sure what this advice has to do with Highline 64? 

This forum is getting increasingly lame. Boredom during the pandemic? Now we're smogged in.  What next?  Oh, the huge Hornets!

Stay safe and indoors till this thing passes.

Gregg Wilson

Not related to high school but of interest:

I worked at the Hanford Atomic Works in the mid 1970s. I became very familar with the inner working and internal construction of a plutonium reactor, a plutonium extraction mill and a plutonium finishing plant. In 2001, I was asked by an astronmer to examine the Great Pyramid and discover what its purpose was.

To my surprise, it had all the nuclear processes at Hanford. The King's Chamber was the reactor, with a southern shaft that supplied water to the reactor and a northern shaft that allowed steam to escape. The Queen's Chamber was the for the extraction of plutonium from the reactor waste and the purification of plutonium. The descending passage allowed the nuclear waste to flow down to the subterranean chamber. The waste then went down the "Bottomless Pit" to the sands far below the landscape. Not enough plutonium was produced to be a primary fuel for rockets, etc, but enough to act as the "spark plug" to ignite the primary fuel: polydeuterium. I wrote a long, detailed paper about this and it was published in the Meta Research Bulletin of September, 2001.

I published a book on this and other subjects in 2016.

Bill Engelhardt

May bring back some memories of our sophomore year.

Ronald Goodmansen

Thanks Bill, you come up with some good old memories.

Gary Korsgaard

Something I think is interesting. Go online to drcharlieward.co.uk then click on youtube then click videos then watch at least any three from begining to end. then let us see what happens.

Gary Korsgaard

Tim Jones (Jones)

KJR in Seattle DJ Lan Roberts was the first DJ to play Jose' Feliciano's Light My Fire.  Lan is credited with launching Jose's music career. That about 1966. 

About 1965, Lan coined a word on the air.  That word: "toowittowee".  I have never seen Lan's word spelled, so I'm guessing on the spelling.  Definition: Very very very very very cool! I was going to name one of my boats Toowittowee.  Never did.

KJR's DJ Pat O'Day lived(s) on San Juan Island while I lived there. Pat would MC many events in the islands.  As soon as Pat spoke, you immediately knew it was Pat O'Day, very distictive voice. 

Speaking of distictive voices, Bill Engelhardt has once of those voices.  I met Bill on the Sylvester ski bus in 9th grade. Bill about my size at the time had this booming voice. I thought, whoa, who is this guy? Good to see you on the forum, Bill!

Singer's voices don't seem to age much. Tony Bennett still sounds like Tony.  

Okay, that's 30 for today. Stay safe, stay healthy out there......

Tom Chavez

I listened to Charlie Ward’s conversation with Ben Greer, former serviceman, who was sexually abused by a clergyman as a boy, and then disappointed by an ineffective justice system. The two agreed that society is messed up and that they have lost trust in government, academics, mainstream media and assorted ‘authorities.’ 

Ben spoke about his recent change toward a spiritual worldview. Charlie praised the spiritual levels of southeast Asian cultures, that stood up to the US military for many years. (Charlie and Ben are UK citizens.)

They don’t like the vulgar degraded nature of modern western culture. 

Why are children abused by priests, teachers, and coaches? Ben expressed belief in the devil. Can we blame the devil for the evil in this world? Do we have any share of responsibility?

Without honesty, trust disappears. And trust is the glue that holds society together. If society is falling apart, as seems to be the case, is that the devil’s fault?

The show ended with the reminder that, “Jesus loves you.”

What does any of this have to do with Highline high school? Classmate's interests are the connection. 

Bill Engelhardt

Another from the archives. January 21, 1963: 

Tom Chavez

Tim, more likely than Mt. Rainier erupting, would be the release of lahar mudflows. The diagram below shows how over the past 5,600 years mudflows have filled large parts of Puget Sound, flowing into Lake Washington, Elliot Bay, and Commencement Bay. Such lahars may occur without volcanic activity, in which case there could be little or no warning.

Another risk is a Cascadia-type quake like that of January, 1700, whose tsunami was recorded in Japan. The geological record shows that earthquakes of magnitude 8+ occur in the Cascadia subduction zone every 500 years or so, often with tsunamis. FEMA’s operating assumption is that a Big One could raze Seattle, other coastal cities and most everything west of Interstate-5.

Virginia Wolfe (Scheffer)

Gads, I still remember the words of most of the songs on the fab fifty.....that's a good thing, I have not completely lost my mind.  Thanks for the memories!

Linda Pompeo (Worden)

Well Virginia.  You are doing a lot better than me.  I don't even remember some of them!

Thank you for jogging our memories Bill. It's fun to recall the 'olden days'.

Tim Jones (Jones)

KJR Channel 95!  That's a great one, Bill. Photos of the DJ's including Lan Roberts and Pat O'Day.  Thanks for sharing that!  Will have to boot-up some of those songs on YouTube.

Tom, yes i'm aware of the lahar danger from Mt. Rainier. All of the Puyallup Valley's nice level ground came from a giant lahar coming down the White river. Could it happen again? Yes. 

Nick Zentner, Geology teacher from Central Washington College does numerous videos on YouTube about Pacific Northwest geology.

One of those video lectures I'd recommend everyone in the Puget Sound Basin watch is:

'Mount Rainier's Oscola Mud Flow' https://youtu.be/WMCXHewLIWc

If you watch any of Nick's video lectures you'll realize what a great teacher Nick is. 

The first of Nick's lectures I watched was on the BIG ONE, the potential 9.0 earthquake supposedly overdue here in the Northwest.  That's probably a good one to watch as well, because Nick paints a different picture on the Big One than what is painted by the local media.

Nick also does lectures on the great Ice Dam that let go creating Dry Falls and another great lecture on how Lake Chelan was created.

Got rain here in SW Washington last night. Still some haze, but smells much better outside.

Okay, that's 30 for today. Take care out there wherever you are.......

Tim Jones (Jones)

Beauty and Brains  Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr, often proclaimed “the most beautiful woman in the world.” The 26-yr-old Lamarr was thriving in Hollywood when, in September 1940, Nazi U-boats hunted down & sank a cruise ship trying to evacuate 90 British schoolchildren to Canada. 77 drowned in the bleak north Atlantic. Lamarr, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi-occupied Austria, who had been making America her home since 1938, was outraged. She fought back by applying her engineering skills to development of a sonar sub-locator used in the Atlantic for the benefit of the Allies.The principles of her work, Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology,and this work led to her to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Tom Chavez

A friend sent me a poem by a famous American poet I never heard of who won the Pulitzer for Poetry thrice and was nominated for a Nobel in Literature four times. He died in 1935.

The poem reminds me of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Lucky Man.”

It’s a bit shocking, reflecting times of the Great Depression.

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Ken Becker

Happy Birthday, Bill Engelhardt. 🎂.  Last night’s rain cleared the smoke and dampened everything, so it’s safe to light the many, many candles on your birthday 🎂.<>>

Bill Engelhardt

Thank you old (as in longtime) friends for your thoughtful messages. It may take a while to fully get my head around the number 74. Seems like only yesterday I was a youthful 73. 

Bill

Tom Chavez

A Deceptive Poisoning Attempt

      Knowing that the person foretold to kill him was born elsewhere, King Kaṁsa consulted with his ministers and made plans to find and kill the child. Kaṁsa instructed a witch named Pūtanā, who knew the black art of killing small children, to kill all newborns wherever she found them.    

      Pūtanā made herself appear very beautiful, with broad hips, thin waist, full breasts, earrings, and flowers in her hair. Entering the village of Vṛndāvan, she glanced about with a smiling face, and the residents and innocent cowherd women saw her as a goddess of fortune carrying a lotus flower in her hand.

      Because of her exquisite beauty, she moved freely and entered the house of Nanda and Yaśodā. When Pūtanā found baby Kṛṣṇa lying on a small bed, he closed his eyes. Some say that he did not want to see the face of a child-killer. Others say that he closed them because he had to kill a woman, which was strictly forbidden in Vedic culture.

      When baby Kṛṣṇa closed His eyes, Pūtanā took him on her lap. Although mother Yaśodā and Rohiṇī were present, because Pūtanā was nicely dressed and showed motherly affection toward Kṛṣṇa, they did not object. They could not understand that she was a sword in a decorated sheath. 

      Pūtanā had smeared poison on her breasts and, holding the baby, she pushed a nipple within his mouth. Baby Kṛṣṇa took the nipple in anger and sucked out the milk-poison along with her life air. As Kṛṣṇa sucked out her very breath, Pūtanā fell upon the ground, crying, “Oh, child, leave me, leave me!” 

      As she died screaming, Pūtanā assumed her real form as a demoness, flailing her arms and legs and scattering her long hair. All the cowherd men and women were struck with awe. The tumultuous sound of her death shocked their brains and ears and sent their hearts racing.

      The gopī milkmaids quickly picked up little Kṛṣṇa. Mother Yaśodā and the elder gopīs immediately performed auspicious rituals. Kṛṣṇa did not require protection, but the gopīs, headed by Mother Yaśodā and Rohiṇī, chanted the names of Viṣṇu to give Kṛṣṇa full protection from all evil influences. 

      Kṛṣṇa is supremely pure, and any contact with him, in enmity or in love, is purifying. Although Pūtanā was evil, after death she attained elevation just like a mother of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Kṛṣṇa can offer anyone anything, from spiritual liberation to any conceivable material opulence. 

Gregg Wilson

                                                           CHIVALRY