Thursday, August 29, 2024

The City Of The Lion

The name of Singapore means "City of the Lion". Despite being a long way from India, and having only a minority population of Indians, the name comes from Sanskrit. The name of Singapore is similar to the common surname "Singh", which also means lion. All Sikhs have the surname of Singh, but there are also people named Singh who are not Sikhs.

The name means "City of the Lion", but Singapore is also classified as one of the "Asian Tiger" economies. One thing that is certain is that, when it comes to economics, Singapore is like a lion and a tiger all rolled into one. It is near the top in both dynamic economics and the best places to live in the world.

Singapore had humble beginnings, as a British trading post established in 1819. But it is at an ideal location for trade, right at the end of the long Malay Peninsula. If Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore who has a hotel named for him in the city, went to Heaven, I would like to give him the news someday of how his humble trading post turned into a world-leading city-state.

By city-state, I mean that Singapore is both a city and a nation. It has no hinterland, just the city itself. Such a place should not, by logic, be any kind of a great city. It does not even have enough land to be a great city, much land has been reclaimed from the sea.

But what it is known to have going for it is some of the most dynamic people in the world. Singaporeans have taken a swampy island at the end of the Malay Peninsula and turned it into a contender for the greatest and most important city in the world.

Singapore was part of Malaysia for three years, but left in 1965. There has been inevitable competition with another of the world's great cities, Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur, less than 300 km away. Kuala Lumpur has the nation of Malaysia as it's hinterland while Singapore, being no longer a part of Malaysia, has no such hinterland.

But Singapore has one great advantage, that of it's name. The name of Kuala Lumpur means something like "the place by the rivers where there is a lot of mud". As one person who had lived in Singapore asked, "Which would you rather do business with, 'The City of the Lion' or 'The place where there is a lot of mud' "?

The name that has been most associated with Singapore is that of the late prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who ruled until 1990. His son was later the prime minister.

Singapore subsidizes health care and education. It actually pays it's people to exercise.

The following scenes are in the central part of Singapore, beginning with a former convent that is now known by the initials CHIJMS. The first three scenes of central Singapore are from Google Earth.




There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@1.295236,103.8520966,3a,75y,94.62h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPQBtO-ev4tLO7S3TQyhGLbwgbIJu8PYmMZfAx4!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPQBtO-ev4tLO7S3TQyhGLbwgbIJu8PYmMZfAx4%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya186.62408-ro0-fo100!7i7168!8i3584

This begins in the area with a lot of Chinese businesses, known as Nagore Dargah. But more than three-quarters of the population of Singapore is of Chinese ethnicity. The first six images of central Singapore are from Google Earth and Street View.











https://www.google.com/maps/@1.280174,103.8419704,3a,75y,41.08h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sgafWy6P0k42EVkP4jpK8bg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DgafWy6P0k42EVkP4jpK8bg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D41.069736%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Unlike neighboring Malaysia, Islam is a minority religion in Singapore, and Malay is not widely spoken. But there is a well-known mosque, Masjid Sultan. This is the surrounding area. The first four images of Masjid Sultan are from Google Street View.





https://www.google.com/maps/@1.3024274,103.8587303,3a,75y,90.15h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s5dM2JopejBUQ6CzK1HDyfQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D5dM2JopejBUQ6CzK1HDyfQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D90.1465%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

This is inside the Marina Bay Sands Mall, and the surrounding area. Does this remind Toronto readers of Eaton Centre? All that they need are some of the wooden geese.

https://www.google.com/maps/@1.2834067,103.8590238,3a,75y,78.44h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipODKof5DX3fOVy-tUR90Je1RAllGuCIU15dHhFw!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipODKof5DX3fOVy-tUR90Je1RAllGuCIU15dHhFw%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya79.43383-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

This is the Clarke Quay shopping and entertainment area.

https://www.google.com/maps/@1.2902604,103.8456582,3a,75y,109.97h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNzdqMZaPppKvFPS2LRXEG9-6JgLhl219n8vXDj!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNzdqMZaPppKvFPS2LRXEG9-6JgLhl219n8vXDj%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya109.97388-ro-0-fo100!7i4096!8i2048

These scenes begin in the Ion Orchard Mall.

https://www.google.com/maps/@1.3041028,103.8320431,2a,75y,29.88h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sQWBfhH8c2_yAp91RrKdJsw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DQWBfhH8c2_yAp91RrKdJsw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D29.874065%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

The following scenes are of a residential development in Singapore, known as Bishan.

https://www.google.com/maps/@1.3479615,103.8498407,3a,75y,136h,76t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s2Plml9ltNOURuY5WkU4t4g!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D2Plml9ltNOURuY5WkU4t4g%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D136.5%26pitch%3D-14.999996%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656
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The Make-Work Eras

There was a vast amount of industrial production to supply America's war effort during the First World War. After the war the productive capacity was turned toward consumer goods. Industry turned out a wide range of goods, from cars to radios. This brought about the memorable decade known as the "Roaring Twenties". 

Companies were naturally trying to maximize profit by charging as much as possible for their products and paying their workers as little as possible. Magnificent skyscrapers were built with the wealth that was gained. The trouble was that workers were not being paid enough to be able to afford the goods that they were producing. Manufactured goods were just piling up in warehouses. Factories began cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money, and it spiralled into a devastating crash in October 1929. 

The Thirties were as bad of a time as the Twenties had been good. The economic malaise is known as the Great Depression. In various countries the governments came up with "make-work" projects in an effort to get the economy rolling again. In the U.S. the Works Projects Administration was created. The efforts centered around it were collectively known as the "New Deal".

It is easy to notice that there are a lot of stone government buildings, including schools, that were built during the 1930s. I am writing this about halfway between two nearby middle or prep schools, one of which I attended, that were built at about the same time during the Thirties. These were make-work projects. Better known such projects during this era included Boulder (Hoover) Dam and the dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority. 

In Germany the construction of the Autobahn was a project along similar lines. But none of these efforts completely brought the west out of the Great Depression. A party arose in Germany with another idea. Absorb unemployment by drastically increasing the military forces and get the factories back to full production making military equipment for them. The party was the Nazis and the plan worked brilliantly. It was only the following war that completely eradicated the Great Depression.

This concluded what we could call the First Make Work Era. This make work era is recognized as part of economic history but what I would like to add is that there has also been a Second Make Work Era that is unofficial and has not been recognized. The First Make Work Era revolved around building but the Second Make Work Era revolved around technology. 

After the Second World War ended, in 1945, the west was past the economic depression, in fact the economy was booming. But there were other pending issues. There were millions of returning soldiers that would need jobs. Many returning soldiers attended college on programs such as America's G.I. Bill. 

But these college graduates had to have something to do. Another issue after the Second World War was the competition with Communism. The greatest thing that ever happened to Communism was the crash of capitalism in 1929, as described above. This is what turned Communism into a major world economic system. This competition was not just military but was also about living standards. 

What started in the 1950s was the space program. The Nazi V2 rockets can probably be considered as the first man-made objects to enter outer space. There is no exact definition of where outer space begins, since the atmosphere gradually fades out. The first man-made object in orbit was the Soviet satellite Sputnik. 

The space program was one of the main frontiers of the competition with Communism. Like nuclear power, which was being developed at the same time, the space program had both civilian as well as military applications. There were a tremendous number of technology spin-offs from the space program, from powdered orange juice to super-strong glass. The landing of astronauts on the moon, while certainly a great accomplishment, didn't teach us much about the moon that wasn't already known. It's great benefit was all of the technology spin-offs that it brought.

I am certain that part of the motivation of the space program was as a make-work program for the college graduates of the G.I. Bill. It would produce a lot of useful technologies at the same time. We have to remember that the generation that had worked on the original make-work projects during the Thirties were now the people in power. Doesn't it make sense that they would use the economic techniques that they were familiar with?

But the space program, even with it's spin-offs, was a specialized and high-end field. It wouldn't provide jobs for the many millions of returning veterans and workers in industries making things for the military, whose labor would no longer be necessary. Those millions of jobs would be provided by the drastic expansion of the automobile industry after the Second World War. 

In postwar North America having extensive front yards and back yards came into style. When homes have yards, it means that everything must be further apart. This brings us to what we could call "The Automobile Spiral". Having everything further apart means that car ownership is a practical necessity. This, in turn, means that everything must be still further apart because cars require a driveway at the home to park in, wider streets to accommodate them and, highways for through traffic to avoid local congestion.

Most of all, cars mean that there must be parking lots wherever people will be driving to. It is these parking lots that shape the forms of our cities like nothing else. Urban areas balloon with parking lot space so that cities tend to sprawl into one another, rather than having much of a sharp definition.

None of this takes place if buses, streetcars, bicycles and, walking can accomplish daily transportation. But that is only practical without yards. Levittown, New York is considered as the prototype postwar suburb and was followed by a development in Pennsylvania with the same name. Those suburbs were named after the builder, but could just as easily have been named "Yardtown".

The entire economy is shaped by those backyards and front yards. The auto industry quickly became one of the most important. The oil industry grew alongside it to provide fuel for the cars that were made necessary by the distance which yards put between everything. Building and maintaining the necessary highways was yet another major industry. The Urban Renewal movement, from the 1950s to the 1970s, was the reshaping of the older sections of the city to accommodate the cars.

Actually making the cars was only the beginning of the jobs created by the new car culture. Everything from maintenance to sales and accessories to gas stations and building garages for homes provided millions of jobs. In the late Fifties the Interstate Highway System would be built for all of these cars. Doesn't it seem that the postwar development of the car culture was motivated, at least in part, as a general make-work program, not as high-end as the space program, by the people in power who remembered the programs of the Thirties? 

The millions of returning soldiers after the end of the Second World War started families, and this brought about another postwar issue. Their children would be known as the Baby Boomers. The first of the Baby Boomers would graduate from high school in 1964. That would mean a steady flow of millions of people who needed jobs. The people in power must have dreaded nothing more than the millions of people without jobs that they remembered from the Thirties.

Could it be just a coincidence that America's large-scale involvement in the Vietnam War began just as the first Baby Boomers were graduating from high school and would need jobs? The confrontation with Communism was still going on at this time, but the primary purpose of the Vietnam War was not the confrontation on the military side. It would be all of the production that the war would bring and all the jobs that it would provide, and the economic prosperity that it would produce. Remembering that it was the Second World War that finally brought the west out of the Great Depression. We have seen this in more detail in the section 17) AMERICA'S WAR IN VIETNAM, in the compound posting "Investigations" December 2018.

I define the postwar "SECOND MAKE-WORK ERA" as being unofficial and unannounced, unlike the first one, and revolving around technology rather than building.

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The Information Mismatch In The Universe

This is being reposted because more has been added to it.

The simple harmonic motion of a pendulum is caused by an information mismatch. It is one dimension of information against two. The axis of the pendulum is a one-dimensional line but it can swing in two dimensions. 

When the pendulum is released from a position, other than with it's axis aligned with the direction of gravity, what should happen, according to the Law of Gravity, is that the pendulum should immediately align itself with gravity with the one-dimensional axis in a vertical position, and if it was an object falling in a one-dimensional line that is what would happen.

But what a pendulum does is effectively to get an object to fall in two dimensions, rather than one. The two dimensions must be represented equally, regardless of which one the fall begins in. Since the pendulum itself is only one-dimensional it's initial fall must be equalled on the other side. But this makes it go too far to the other side, relative to what it would do if this was a one-dimensional fall. So it corrects this by going back in the opposite direction, but then goes too far to the other side. The process repeats and, if there was no such thing as friction or outside forces, would go on indefinitely. 

In my cosmology theory the matter in the universe is also an information mismatch because it originated from a two-dimensional sheet of space that was within, but not contiguous with, the surrounding background space. The Big Bang saw one of the two dimensions of the sheet disintegrate into energy and the other formed matter, which was scattered over four dimensions of the background space. We perceive one of these four dimensions as time. So it is an information mismatch of two dimensions against four, in a way similar to that of a pendulum, and the matter in the universe actually operates like a pendulum. 

For an explanation of the cosmology theory there is an abbreviated version of it in the posting "Cosmology Theory Illustrated With Diagrams", January 2024.

The way that matter in the universe operates like a pendulum is to alternate between concentration and dispersion. We could say that the two-dimensional sheet, within the background of four dimensions, was a concentration and the scattering caused by the Big Bang was a dispersion. But then, when the universe had cooled enough, many of the negatively- and positively-charged particles came together to form atoms, which usually have a neutral electric charge. Aside from atoms, other matter came back together into quarks, other than those within nucleons, and black holes. 

Even when the charged particles came back together to form atoms the dispersion side of the pendulum was at work. The vast majority of the inside of an atom is empty space. Hydrogen is the simplest and original atom, and still by far the most common element in the universe. The density inside a hydrogen atom is just about what we would expect if matter consists of two dimensions dispersed through four, one of which we perceive as time.

Many of the atoms come back together into stars, and then the stars into galaxies and groups of galaxies. This is the Big Bang trying to come back together, according to the pendulum principle of concentration against dispersion. It comes back together even more as lighter atoms are crunched together into heavier atoms by fusion in stars. A star is born when enough matter comes together by mutual gravity to overcome the electron repulsion between atoms and crunch lighter atoms into heavier ones. The new heavier atom contains less overall energy than the lighter atoms that were fused together to form it. The excess energy is released as radiation and that is why stars shine.

But the dispersion side of the pendulum is still at work, and the pendulum must swing back to that side. The fusion of atoms in stars, which is concentration, is balanced by the release of radiation during the process, which is dispersion. If the star is large enough it will ultimately explode in a supernova, which is dispersion as it scatters matter across space. The energy released by a supernova fuses some atoms together into elements heavier than iron, which cannot be formed by the ordinary fusion process. This is concentration but the dispersion side of the pendulum is still at work as many of these new heavy atoms are less-than-stable and gradually release particles or radiation to reach a more stable state. These emissions are known as radioactivity. 

Black holes, by far the greatest concentration of matter, eventually evaporate into radiation. So radiation is the ultimate return to dispersion, from concentration. Every time you see the stars you can see that matter, which is a concentration, is continuously being converted to radiation but the process is not being reversed.

With the radiation that is the ultimate in dispersion we again see the simple harmonic motion of the pendulum pattern. A wave cycle of electromagnetic radiation can be graphed as a sine wave. It starts from zero and proceeds to a peak on what we could call the positive side. It then goes back to zero before repeating the process on what we could call the negative side. It is just like a pendulum. 

The explanation given by my cosmology theory is that there is an information mismatch, just as with the pendulum, of one dimension against two. Matter ultimately consists of one-dimensional strings, one of the two dimensions of the original two-dimensional sheet of space, while an electromagnetic wave is two-dimensional. All electromagnetic waves originate with matter. Unlike with a pendulum there is no friction in space but the wave must diminish with distance, according to the Inverse Square Law. The result is the same as with the pendulum, the wave first goes too far to one side and then the other.

So when matter is continuously converted to radiation it is a movement toward the dispersion side but the pendulum principle is still there in the sine wave. 

Another way we can see this information mismatch, of two dimensions against one, is in centrifugal force, and this parallels the information mismatch of the pendulum. When an object is moving in an arc there is a force pulling to the outside. There are many obvious examples of centrifugal force, from carnival rides to the earth bulging at the equator due to it's spin. 

But what is happening is that the object is moving, at any given moment, along a one-dimensional straight line. But the arc is two-dimensional and this is what causes the information mismatch of one dimension against two. The direction of the one-dimensional straight line, along which the object is moving, is continuously changing. This is what causes the outward force that we refer to as centrifugal force. The object is still moving in the direction that it was a moment ago as the direction of movement changes. 

This information mismatch shows the truth of my cosmology theory. Matter formed from a two-dimensional sheet of space that was within, but not contiguous with, the four dimensions of background space over which the matter was scattered over. If not for this information mismatch there would be no such thing as simple harmonic motion, including pendulums and electromagnetic waves, or centrifugal force in the universe. 

The nature of the universe, as described here, shows that matter and space did not form together. Space formed first and matter is somewhat of an alien newcomer. This information mismatch is because, as described in my cosmology theory, matter former from a two-dimensional sheet of space that was within, but not contiguous with, four dimensions of background space. One of the two dimensions became matter and the other became energy, in what we perceive as the Big Bang. This explains why the average density of matter in the universe is extremely sparse and the universe always seeks the lowest energy state.

None of this would be the case if matter and space had formed together, as is held by many cosmological theories. We can see that the dimensions of space form right angles, because that is the only form that can fit together with no leftover space. But yet gravitational spheres of matter, such as planets and stars, take the form that is as different as possible from right angles. If matter and space had formed together this would not be the case and they would take the same form.

The rotation and revolution of stars, planets and galaxies achieves the lowest information state because, by cycling through all possible positions, it avoids the necessity of making the choice of one position. We know that energy and information is really the same thing, because we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it and cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it, and if, as we know, the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, then it should also seek the lowest information state. This seeking of the lowest information and energy states would be completely unnecessary, and would make no sense, if space and matter had formed together.

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Radio Stations As Navigation Beacons

Here is something that I just don't understand. I first thought of this when I was about 12 years old. It was in the news again this week about how vulnerable the GPS system is. The signals can be jammed or spoofed and the satellites can be shot down. 

So why aren't we using radio stations as navigation beacons, at least as a backup system? 

A radio station is not just a radio station. It is also a navigation beacon. There are dozens of radio stations everywhere and the transmission antenna are in fixed locations. It is easy to plot the locations of transmission antenna because they are generally easily visible. They are essentially free navigation beacons, whether at home or over a hostile country.

A drone or aircraft could have an antenna on each side. The signal from a given transmitter would be stronger on the side of the aircraft that was closest to it because the metal body of the aircraft would hinder the signal to the antenna on the far side of the aircraft. This would make it easy to use radio stations as navigation beacons. 

Antenna could be mounted in other places, such as wire antenna along the front and back of the wings. Pairs of high frequency antenna could be mounted inside the aircraft with a metal barrier between them. This is a simple and very useful idea, using beacons that are already there. This should have been implemented decades ago.

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The Solution To Global Warming

Let's review my solution to global warming.

Remember that there is a simple solution to global warming. This doesn't mean that it will be easy, but it is fairly simple.

Global Warming is caused by carbon dioxide, CO2, in the air and the search is on for the development of a physical process to actively reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere but this is what all the plants on earth are already doing. What the world is basically doing now is taking the oil that formed from prehistoric plants and burning it in car engines, and other machines, to get the solar energy that was absorbed when these plants lived and releasing that energy to drive the car.

When those plants of long ago were growing, they pulled CO2 out of the air and used the energy of the sunlight to split the one carbon atom from the two oxygen atoms. The oxygen was released back into the atmosphere while the carbon atom went to build the plant's structure.

Unfortunately when the oil, the fossilized remains of these plants, is refined into gasoline and is burned in car engines, oxygen is taken out of the air and combined with carbon atoms from the gasoline to recreate the CO2 molecules that were broken up in the plants during prehistoric times.

Thus, by burning fossil fuels we are putting all that CO2 that has been underground and out of the atmosphere for so long, back into the atmosphere. The result is global warming because CO2 acts like a greenhouse in the earth's atmosphere.

Normally, the sun radiates energy to the earth, which absorbs it but re-radiates some of it back into space at a different wavelength. CO2 in the atmosphere does not affect the incoming radiation but it blocks the radiation that is being re-radiated by the earth back into space. So, the earth gets warmer.

Since we have released much of the carbon that was being held underground for millions of years back into the atmosphere, why not simply reverse that process? Plants operate on a cycle in terms of carbon and carbon dioxide, CO2. As the plant grows, it pulls carbon out of the air to build it's structure, as described above.

When the plant dies and decays, oxygen in the air combines with the carbon in the plant to return CO2 to the atmosphere. Since atmospheric oxygen is ordinarily diatomic, consisting of two atoms together, we get the two atoms of oxygen combining with one of carbon.

Why don't we recreate the burial of billions of tons of carbon underground and out of the atmosphere? What if all the grass that was mowed every summer was used to make a large-scale product, such as asphalt, so that it could not decay and return it's carbon to the atmosphere? The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would decrease.

There is all kinds of regulations about recycling garbage, why not do the same with mown grass and other plant matter? All that we have to do is make something out of grass clippings so that they do not decay. We have done a pretty good job of finding all manner of uses for discarded automobile tires.

Even if this was done on all the lawns on federal or local government properties in the U.S., Canada and, Europe, it may virtually solve global warming by permanently removing carbon from the atmosphere. This is a simplistic solution but the way to solve this may well be low-tech and labor-intensive instead of high-tech. 

LIGHTNING AND TRAFFIC LIGHTS 

Do you know what the ultimate in energy is? We often see it when there is a storm. It is lightning.

There is a tremendous amount of energy in a lightning bolt. Currents of air knocks some of the electrons out of atomic orbitals of atoms in the air. A lightning bolt is between the cloud and the ground, or between two clouds. It is a flow of negatively charged electrons to correct a charge imbalance.

Why can't we harness the power of lightning? I have been wondering about this since I was a child. If we can harness the lateral movement of the air, by windmills, then why can't we harness the vertical movement of the air, by lightning?

It is not difficult to get lightning to strike, a metal tower that gives it the route of least resistance to the ground is all that is needed. The saying that "lightning never strikes twice in the same place" has no truth to it whatsoever. Although lightning sometimes goes from the cloud to the ground, and sometimes vice versa.

To harness it's tremendous power we would need a heavy duty capacitor structure that would temporarily store the electrical energy. Then the current would pass through a chemical vat that would act as a chargeable battery. The electrical energy of the lightning bolt would then be stored as chemical energy, and released at will as useful power.

The capacitor and the battery would decrease the conductivity of the metal tower to the ground. It would be necessary for it to still be by far the path of least resistance for the lightning bolt to get to ground. 

This structure would have to be wired in preparation for the lightning to be either from cloud to ground, or vice versa. A one way bolt of lightning is direct current. One way that it could be turned into alternating current is to have two batteries, one for each direction of the bolt, and alternate release of current between the two.

There is no reason for us not to be harnessing the tremendous power in lightning.

Another issue is traffic lights. Have you ever thought about the vast amount of energy that is wasted while idling at traffic lights? Not to mention time and how it is adding to global warming.

There is so much discussion about "smart" technology nowadays. Traffic Lights are about as dumb as a technology as there is. A hammer is smarter than a traffic light because at least a hammer isn't wasteful. How many times have you seen ten cars waiting at a red light while there are no cars on the green light? 

Traffic lights are an example of what I refer to as being "technically forward but system backward". A technology is set up on a basic system. We keep making technical progress but then years later we are still using the primitive original system on which the technology was based, and this is what is holding the whole technology back. Another example is the primitive ASCII system of computer encoding.

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Thursday, August 22, 2024

Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is the capital and largest city of Malaysia, in southeast Asia. All major religions are found in Malaysia, but about half the population is Moslem and it is considered as a Moslem country. Malaysia has been an independent country since 1957. It is easy to write a visit to Kuala Lumpur because it is not a very old city. There is not a lot of history to go over. It began as a settlement in a tin-mining area.

Do you really want to know what the name of "Lumpur" means? It means literally "mud". When has a city with such a lowly name turned out to be so magnificent? This is now one of the leading cities of the world.

Malaysia is a country in two geographic halves. The western half is the southern portion of the long Malay Peninsula. The eastern half is part of the island of Borneo. Kuala Lumpur is in the western half. Malaysia is a highly-regarded Commonwealth country that is known for it's "New Economic Policy", which subsidizes health care and a high level of education for all.

The following scenes begin in the Central Market, which was established in 1888. All around are scenes of the central part of the city. The first three scenes of the Central Market are from Google Street View. 




There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3.1455612,101.6954956,3a,75y,249.59h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNbY876DXO8Q-8j-4GeZ-4_hoADlQc3czY0ToLX!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNbY876DXO8Q-8j-4GeZ-4_hoADlQc3czY0ToLX%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-5.436595-ya316.73694-ro-5.9081297-fo100!7i5376!8i2688

This is the National Palace of Malaysia, the Istana Negara. The flag of Malaysia bears a similarity to that of the U.S. as it has horizontal red and white stripes. The first three images of the National Palace are from Google Street View. 




https://www.google.com/maps/@3.1611697,101.6653481,3a,75y,127.81h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMBcUatiU6HEl3T0yTOpkiW-5Y_ulPB3qUocBMx!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMBcUatiU6HEl3T0yTOpkiW-5Y_ulPB3qUocBMx%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya196.84857-ro0-fo100!7i7168!8i3584

Yellow seems to be Malaysia's favorite color. But it is the most cheerful of the colors. I believe that McDonald's has been so successful partially because it is a celebration of this cheerful color. When I was a young boy I wanted one of those bright yellow raincoats, but my parents didn't think it was necessary. The following two images are from Google Street View. 



The following scenes begin near the twin Petronas Towers. These were the tallest buildings in the world, for several years at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century. You may remember, in our visit to Pyongyang, that there is a smaller-scale copy of the Petronas Towers there, two buildings joined by a bridge. The first three images of the Petronas Towers are from Google Street View.











The city's multiculturalism shows in the Brickfields area, where bricks were originally made to build the city. Malaysia's New Economic Policy provides for the native Malays, known as Bumiputera. Business people tend to be Malays of Chinese descent, professionals tend to be of Indian descent. The goal is to make sure that the native Malay people do not get left out of the country's wealth. Remember that southeast Asia is referred to as Indochina because of the Indian and Chinese influence.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3.1324249,101.6883582,3a,75y,313h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1spX10XvT1qbouEIlUk2MngQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DpX10XvT1qbouEIlUk2MngQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D313.5305%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

This is an area of Kuala Lumpur, known as Pudu.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3.1363359,101.7136317,3a,75y,34h,87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1shXuBQYXj4wPbSXji0brPOw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DhXuBQYXj4wPbSXji0brPOw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D34.500004%26pitch%3D-3%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

This is a residential area of Kuala Lumpur.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3.0576108,101.5840162,3a,75y,181h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s0ZigJ_GgLX6DP7n0M06dfg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D0ZigJ_GgLX6DP7n0M06dfg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D181.5%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Not everything in Kuala Lumpur is wealthy, but even those areas that are not are not too bad.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3.2208358,101.6604624,3a,75y,2h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s6ZMqrzGrKarE_olB6TXUFQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D6ZMqrzGrKarE_olB6TXUFQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D2.3069077%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Don't forget the scenario of nations in the world that we saw in the posting on this blog, "Understanding The World In Terms Of The South And West And The North And East", April 2016. In the South And West, nations continuously change over long periods of time. The South And West is the domain of monotheistic (one god) religions. In the North And East, nations tend to remain the same for thousands of years. The North And East is the domain of the eastern religions, predominantly Hinduism and Buddhism.

But to break the world down into two simple halves like this, we have to understand that the Islamic countries are part of the South And West. The Islamic countries including Malaysia, which is a modern creation that began in 1957, are in long-term continuous change like those in the South And West.
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Electric Vehicles And Flag Symbolism

We saw the great power of flag symbolism in "The Power Of Symbolism", March 2024. Ethiopia, in east Africa is really turning cars upside down by leading the way toward electric vehicles. It was the first country to ban the import of gas-powered vehicles. Part of the reason is certainly that fuel is expensive there, remember that Ethiopia is landlocked, but the country has abundant hydropower.

But might another reason be symbolism of the national flag? The colors of the Ethiopian flag are that of a traffic light turned upside down. Image from Wikipedia article "Flag of Ethiopia".



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Twinkling Stars And Cosmology

Have you ever wondered why stars appear to "twinkle" but planets shine with a steady light? Or why a flame appears to "flicker" but electric lights shine with a steady light?

Both are optical illusions. We know that stars do not really twinkle. It cannot be caused by the atmosphere because if it was then planets would twinkle too. The answer is actually rooted in cosmology. 

In my cosmology theory the particles of matter, such as electrons, are actually very long strings in four dimensions. We perceive them as strings because we can only see in three of the four dimensions, the fourth dimension we perceive as time. Electromagnetic waves, such as light, are produced by the movement of these strings and can be modeled as two-dimensional sine waves. The reason these strings of matter produce electromagnetic waves is that both matter and space is composed of the same near-infinitesimal negative and positive electric charges. Space is an alternating pattern of the charges and matter is like charges held together, against their mutual repulsion, by energy. This is why the fundamental particles, such as electrons, tend to have an electric charge. The energy holding the like charges together, against their mutual repulsion, is what we refer to as the Mass-Energy Equivalence. 

I won't go into detail about the cosmology theory because there is an abbreviated version of it in the posting "Cosmology Theory In Diagrams", January 2024.

What this means is that the electrons in the atoms in your eyes are one-dimensional strings. Our eyes, as well as camera equipment, operate by electrons being knocked out of atoms by the energy in electromagnetic waves. These loose electrons form a current and that is how we see.

Electromagnetic waves, such as light, are two-dimensional waves that can be aligned in any direction in space, perpendicular to the direction in which they are moving. If you look at the face of a clock, some waves might be aligned 7 o'clock to 1 o'clock. Others might be aligned 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock, and so on. These alignments, relative to the direction the light is traveling, are known as polarities. Light is ordinarily a mixture of all polarities. If the polarities of light are all lined up then the light is referred to as "polarized". 

In lasers the light must be polarized, as well as all of exactly the same wavelength. This is why lasers can exert force. The energy in light can be modeled as a sine wave and the force that each wave exerts on an object is dissipated by each wave striking an object at a different point on each wave. A laser exerts force because all of the waves are of the same polarity and wavelength and so are all pushing together.

The light from stars would be unpolarized, aligned in all different directions. We know that light is partially polarized when it is reflected off a surface. This explains why stars "twinkle" but planets, which are reflecting starlight, shine with a steady light. The steady light is at least partially polarized while the twinkling is unpolarized. 

There can be only one logical explanation for the twinkling of stars. Our eyes cannot tell if light is polarized or not. But what our eyes can tell is if the polarity is changing. The light from a star is a mix of all polarities that is continuously changing. This causes our eyes to perceive the star as "twinkling". 

The only way to explain this is if, as my cosmology theory holds, the electrons in our eyes are really one dimensional strings, which means that each must be aligned in a particular direction. This wouldn't be true if electrons were particles in three dimensional space. When an electron string is aligned in a particular direction it will receive light waves that are polarized in the same direction. If the polarity of light is continuously changing then the electron strings in our eyes that are receiving the waves will be continuously changing, and we perceive that as the twinkling of a star or the flickering of a flame, and it shows that my cosmology theory must be correct.

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Making Cleaning More Interesting

When you have to do cleaning, or you have a job that includes cleaning, here is something that might make it more interesting.

The so-called "Dust Budget Crisis" sounds like it is about a city's inability to afford to operate street sweepers. It is actually about the efforts of scientists to explain why so much of the heavier matter in space, meaning heavier than hydrogen or helium, is in the form of dust. A much-higher proportion of heavier matter is in the form of dust than scientific models predict there should be. 

This is from the Wikipedia article "Crab Nebula". It is dust from a supernova explosion illuminated by a star within.

The answer is very simple. It is a matter of how information operates. This is solved not by my cosmology theory but by the theory, "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017.

The first section of that theory is "THE BIAS TOWARD DUST". I wrote that explanation of why there is so much dust in space before I ever heard of the "Dust Budget Crisis". 

There is the nearly infinitesimal scale known as Planck's Length, after the German physicist, because it shows up in all manner of physics formula. In my cosmology theory the universe is composed of negative and positive electric charges and Planck's Length is so important because it is the size of one of these charges. Then there is the nearly infinite scale of the entire universe. The reason for so much dust in space is that the typical size of a mote of dust is exactly halfway between these two scales. As explained in "The Lowest Information Point" this makes the scale of dust particles a favored position. 

The reason it is a favored position is that this halfway point in scale requires less information than would be required otherwise. We can illustrate this by what I call "related ratios". These are two equal ratios where the numerator of one is also the denominator of the other. A / B = B / C contains less information than A / B = C / D because the first equation contains only three points of information while the second contains four. This is what I mean by "The Lowest Information Point".

Doesn't that make cleaning up at least a little bit more interesting? 

This also explains why metals exist and the majority of the elements are metals. In a metal a large number of atoms share their outermost electrons. This explains the metallic properties such as the tendency to conduct electricity. A collection of atoms that shares it's outermost electrons is known as a crystal. These metallic crystals exist because, just like a mote of dust, they are in a favored position because they are generally halfway in scale between the scale of the near-infinitesimal electric charges that comprise everything in the universe and the scale of the entire universe.

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The Strong Leader Binding Phase

With the end of rule by Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh let's remember the principle of the Strong Leader Binding Phase. This is a general principle that applies when autocratic rule has ended and there is an attempt to build more democracy, and is not meant to apply specifically to Bangladesh.

I have described what I have termed "The strong leader binding phase". I consider this phase in the development of democracy to be extremely relevant to recent world events. 

The strong leader binding phase is a period of rule by a strong leader, such as a king or other autocrat, that a diverse country must first go through before it can hold together as a working democracy. Until the required strong leader binding phase is complete, a diverse country must have a strong leader to hold the country together. It is only upon completion of this phase that a diverse country can function as a democracy without coming apart. 

Aside from the strong leader binding phase, transition from autocratic rule to democracy is difficult enough. I have written repeatedly, and for a long time, that when people rise up and overthrow a dictator in order to implement a democratic form of government, overthrowing the dictator is the easy part. Building a successful democracy afterward is far more difficult. 

The transition from autocracy, in some form, to democracy is difficult enough in any country. Diversity, whether ethnic, religious, cultural or, linguistic, makes it even more precarious. This is where the strong leader binding phase comes into play.

The more diversity that there is in a country, the longer it must spend in the strong leader binding phase before a successful transition to democracy can be reasonably expected. An obvious example is Iraq. It is a diverse, and largely artificial, country composed of three main groups, Shiite Arab Moslems, Sunni Arab Moslems and, Kurds, which are generally Sunni Moslem by religion but are not Arabs. 

The truth is that Iraq needed an dictator like Saddam simply to hold it together. The success of democracy in such a country would not be possible, at least not until it had gone through an extended strong leader binding phase. We could debate whether Iraq, put together from remnants of the Ottoman Empire, should ever have existed at all, but that is somewhat beyond the scope of our discussion here. 

Libya was put together from the two historical provinces of Tripolitania in the west and Cyrenaica in the east, as well as Fezzan further south. Libya was ruled first by King Idris and then, since 1969, by Moammar Gaddafi. In 2011 the west was delighted at Gaddafi's overthrow and execution during the Arab Spring, thinking that the country would now be a democracy. But that has never happened because the Strong Leader Binding Phase had been interrupted. Libya has reverted to being split between east and west, with Tripoli being capital of the west and Benghazi of the east.

Nigeria is another one, it is known for it's series of dictators. But once again, it was just too diverse to work as a democracy yet. Like Iraq, there are three main groups: The Hausa, the Ibo and, the Yoruba. There was an unsuccessful war of independence in the 1960s, known as the Biafran War because the aim was an independent nation of Biafra, and it is certain to require a considerable period under strong leaders before such a new and diverse country can be at it's best as a democracy. 

What happened in Yugoslavia? Plainly and simply, the strong leader binding phase was prematurely interrupted by the end of Communism, and the country could not hold together. Yugoslavia had been a diverse and highly artificial country put together by fiat after the end of World War One. As readers who watched the tragic news during the 1990s know, it was composed mainly of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and, Slovenians. Tito held the country together for three decades before his death, but more time was needed in the strong leader binding phase when the Communist east bloc disintegrated. 

Czechoslovakia was put together at the same time as Yugoslavia. It didn't survive the disintegration of Communism either, but it was a simpler country with only two main groups in better-defined regions, and it split without bloodshed (The Velvet Divorce). 

Is it only a coincidence that the great European dictators of the early Twentieth Century, Hitler, Mussolini and, Franco led countries that were more diverse than other European countries, Franco's Spain, or had relatively recently been united, Italy and Germany? Spain is quite diverse and today still has two major separatist movements, the Basques in the northwest of Spain and the Catalans in the northeast, around Barcelona. In the Nineteenth Century, Germany and Italy were each united from several smaller states which spoke the same language, Italy by Garibaldi and Germany by Otto Von Bismarck. All three countries naturally required a strong leader binding phase and I see Hitler, Mussolini and, Franco as the manifestations of that phase. 

The United States underwent it's strong leader binding phase under English kings prior to gaining independence in 1776. If not for this period, there is no reason to believe that the diverse and distant colonies in New England, in Virginia and, in Georgia would have bonded together to form a single nation. There would certainly have been several smaller countries comprising what is now America. Even so, I see the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65 as being the result of the necessary strong leader binding phase being interrupted by the war of independence. The country needed more time in the strong leader binding phase before it was genuinely one unit, and ready to be a democracy. 

Canada spent longer than the U.S. in the strong leader binding phase under English kings, not becoming independent until 1867. Although Canada does have Quebec separatism, it never had a civil war. There was a Canadian parallel to the U.S. Revolutionary War known as the Upper Canada Rebellion, but it did not have enough support. 

The point of all this is that before we think that every country can be and should be a democracy, in the form of the western democracies, let's remember that not only is it very difficult to build a working democracy after the overthrow of a dictator, but that the dictator may actually be necessary to hold the country together until it's required strong leader binding phase is complete.

In Iraq the U.S. fought many of the same people three separate times. The hoped-for democracy that would appear as soon as Saddam Hussein was removed never came to be. Upon invading Iraq U.S. forces fought the Iraqi Army. When that army was disbanded a roiling insurgency suddenly began. When that was finally put down Islamic State, IS, suddenly emerged as the new force in the Middle East.

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Remembering The Devil

Since my hometown wants to idolize a rock star that calls himself a demon why don't we review this. Trifling with the Devil is not a good idea. This hideous creature is very real. I believe that if we trifle with Satan God periodically allows us a glimpse of what he is like, or what he would be like if his character was transmuted into a human being.


The 2015 massacre in Paris was just plain satanic. The terrorists at the concert ordered people to beg for mercy and then laughed while they shot them anyway. The band playing was "Angels of Death" and the song that was playing when the massacre began was "Kiss the Devil". If we want to listen to a song about kissing the Devil, God was just allowing us to see what the Devil is really like.

In 1968 there was a very popular movie, Rosemary's Baby, about a woman having a baby with Satan as the father. It was directed by Roman Polanski. The following year Polanski's own wife, actress Sharon Tate, was not far from giving birth. She was at home with a group of friends. Suddenly several members of Charles Manson's "family" broke in. Manson himself wasn't there but Charles Watson announced "I am the Devil and I am here to do the Devil's work". Everyone in the house, including Sharon Tate and her unborn baby, were horribly massacred. Sharon Tate had been in an earlier movie referencing the Devil. If we are going to make movies about the Devil at least we should remember what he is really like. He is not very nice.

A local high school, in Kenmore NY, has the "Blue Devils" as it's mascot. I can't imagine children with a religious upbringing having to go to a school with the Devil as it's mascot. Anyway one of the school's own honor students once really shocked virtually crime-free Kenmore, and gave a reminder of what the Devil is like, by massacring his own family with a knife and also killing a neighbor.

When it comes to music the popular country-rock song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" was released by the Charlie Daniels Band in 1979. The Devil approaches a fiddle player with a fiddle made of solid gold and challenged the fiddle player to a contest, with the stakes of the player's soul against the solid gold fiddle. Satan's fiddle playing was backed up by a band of demons. But Satan's fiddle playing was no match for that of the Georgia fiddle player, named Johnny. Satan graciously laid down the golden fiddle in admission of defeat. Unfortunately that isn't the way Satan works in real life. Just after this song was released what was surely the worst thing to happen to modern Georgia began. It is the murder spree known as the "Atlanta Murders of 1979-81" or "The Atlanta Child Murders". At least 28 people were killed. The killings stopped when Wayne Williams was arrested. He was convicted of two murders but the rest have never been solved. There may, of course, be bodies that have never been found.

The Rolling Stones had an album and a single that referenced Satan, "Their Satanic Majesties Request" and "Sympathy For The Devil". The following year the founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones from my native Gloucestershire, died mysteriously in a swimming pool. This turned out to be the founding of the "27 Club", the rock musicians that have died at age 27. Right in a row there was Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, Jim Morrison. Among the other famous musicians who later joined the club was Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.

This creature is nothing to trifle with. 

THE ACID KING OF LONG ISLAND

Here is something especially for New York City and Long Island. This is something that I have never seen pointed out. If you think the house at Amityville is spooky, just read this.

So much has been written about the "Acid King" of Long Island, NY, Ricky Kasso. For someone who died at 17 he has a movie made about him and there is a band named "The Acid King", with his photo on the cover of their first album. "Acid" used to be a slang term for LSD.

I remember when this happened and, back in the 1980s, I read the book "Say You Love Satan" about it. Let me state now that I have no direct experience with drugs and, even when I listened to music, I never liked Heavy Metal. All that I know about this is what was in the news.

I have never made a specific study of crime. But I always followed the news and quite a bit of what is in the news is crime.

In Northport, on the north shore of Long Island, there were several high school dropouts who hung around the park on the waterfront, listened to Heavy Metal music, and did drugs. The ringleader was 17-year-old Ricky Kasso. Among them was Gary Lauwers, also 17.

According to news reports the group, particularly Ricky Kasso, was into Satanism. This does seem to have some truth to it as Kasso had been arrested for digging up an old grave, reportedly to get bones for use in a ritual. 

Kasso and some others also went to the famous, reputedly haunted, house in Amityville where a man had once killed his family, in observance of a pagan day. If news reports are to be believed, Kasso would perform rituals and take drugs in cemeteries, seeking to get in contact with Satan. There was satanic graffiti in the park where the group would hang out.

Gary Lauwers reportedly made the mistake of stealing bags of "angel dust" from Ricky Kasso's jacket while Kasso was passed out. Lauwers returned some of the drugs, and promised to pay for the rest. But it would ultimately cost him his life.

One night Ricky Kasso and several other teenagers, including Gary Lauwers, went up to a wooded area in town to take drugs. Kasso had a knife with him and seemed to have decided that Gary Lauwers was going to be a sacrifice to Satan. 

Kasso tried to light a fire with some sticks but they were too wet. He ordered Lauwers to use some of his clothing to get the fire going. When Gary Lauwers wouldn't put any more of his clothing in the fire, Kasso attacked him and stabbed him with the knife. He ordered Lauwers to "say you love Satan", and proceeded to stab him to death. Others at the murder scene later said that Kasso took the cawing of a crow, while he was stabbing Lauwers, as Satan voicing approval. Gary Lauwers' face was reported to be virtually unrecognizable due to knife wounds.

Also according to news reports Kasso openly boasted about the killing, and took a number of people to see the body. Gary Lauwers had run away from home so many times that he hadn't been missed. 

Finally someone notified the police about the body. Kasso and one of the others that had been at the murder were arrested shortly after, sleeping in a car. The famous photo of Kasso sneering like the Devil was taken at the police station. Not long after being arrested Kasso committed suicide in his cell by hanging with a bedsheet.

While Ricky Kasso no doubt killed Gary Lauwers, and had been arrested for digging up an old grave, there is a lot of controversy about this whole subject. I happened to talk to some people from Northport not long after this happened. They described it as a "media circus gone wild" around "a few dropouts who did drugs". They said that the graffiti was relating to Heavy Metal bands, not overt Satanism.

Certainly part of the reason that this got so much attention was that it took place in a town that was well-to-do, and virtually all white, where things like this aren't supposed to happen.

Ricky Kasso was born on March 29, 1967. He killed Gary Lauwers on June 19, 1984. This means that, on the date of the murder Ricky Kasso was 6,293 days old, including the day of the murder. What I have never seen pointed out is that, if we add 6,293 days from the date of the murder it brings us to 9/11, September 11, 2001.

What would Ricky Kasso have thought had he known that, when the ritual killing of Gary Lauwers was exactly as old as he was when he committed the murder, planes would bring down the World Trade Center towers and many people would claim to have seen the face of the Devil in the smoke?

Remember that the way to foil the Devil is with the power of Jesus.

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Along London's Royal Route

Somerset House was in the global news this week because of a fire. We saw it in "Along London's Royal Route".

I would like to look at reviving the medieval route by which newly-crowned monarchs used to make a procession. Now that we have King Charles III this route is very significant because the last time it was used for a coronation procession was for Charles II.

This is the most natural route across London, from the Tower of London in the east to Buckingham Palace, which wasn't there the last time it was used, in the west. Newly crowned kings and queens, before the days of Buckingham Palace, used to make a procession from the Tower of London to Westminster. King Charles II was the last king to have made the procession along this route, in 1660.

The route is congruent to Paris' Historical Axis, defined by the Louvre, Place Concorde and Napoleon's arches but, unlike that axis, the Royal Route does not form a geometric straight line, although it does include what is considered as the geographical center of London. The curvature of the Thames River makes it impossible for this to be a geometric straight line.

The Royal Route begins at the Tower of London because it was originally a royal palace, built by the Normans. The Crown Jewels have been displayed there since 1669 but it is far older than that.

These are the three photos of the Tower of London on the travel photo blog of Europe. Each photo can be enlarged by clicking on it.

http://markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/2006/09/tower-of-london.html

These are some of the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Jewels_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:Crown_Jewels.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Jewels_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:British_Coronation_Swords.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Jewels_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:Coronet_of_Frederick,_Prince_of_Wales.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Jewels_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:Imperial_State_Crown.png

Notice how the twin towers at the entrance to the Tower of London have clearly influence those of St. James Palace, Hampton Court Palace and, St. John's at Cambridge.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250884.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James%27s_Palace#/media/File:St_Jamess_Palace.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Court_Palace#/media/File:Hampton_Court.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John%27s_College,_Cambridge#/media/File:St_Johns_main_gate.jpg

Adjacent Tower Bridge was built as a late Nineteenth Century complement to the Tower of London.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3879/3734/1600/dc_250883.jpg

Proceeding westward along the Royal Route, there were extensive walls around what was then London. This can be seen by the -gate names in the area, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate and, Ludgate. This is also the area of the Great Fire of 1666.

Along the route, we come to what is known as the London Stone. Unlike the Crown Jewels, it has no intrinsic value in itself. It is a simple block of limestone. But this stone, which is not the same thing as the Coronation Stone, is better known and has more legends woven around it down through the centuries than any of the Crown Jewels. The London Stone literally represents and stands for London. Kings have touched the London Stone with their swords to initiate their rule. Countless promises and contracts have been taken on it. People have come from all over the world to see it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone#/media/File:The_London_Stone.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone#/media/File:St_Swithins_London_Stone_church_1831.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone#/media/File:ONL_(1887)_1.541_-_London_Stone.jpg

The London Stone has been in use since ancient times, for about two thousand years, that is what makes it special. It was likely a boundary stone, used as a reference point for boundaries and distances, in Roman times. From there, it just took on a life of it's own. People have attributed all kinds of magical or prophetic powers to it but, at any rate, it is today a vital symbol of London and this makes this block of limestone probably more valuable than any single crown in the Crown Jewels.

Fleet Street, along our Royal Route, is a very ancient route in London. It used to be the center of news publishing in Britain. The famous street known as The Strand is a westward extension of Fleet Street. The dome in the images is that of St. Paul's Cathedral.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Street#/media/File:Londres_-_Fleet_Street.JPG

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5702391

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3168079

A well-known church along Fleet Street is St. Dunstan in the West. It is actually an early Nineteenth-Century rebuilding of a much older church.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1222887

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1222900

London used to have it's western limit at a place called the Temple Bar. On the other side of that was Westminster. The Temple Bar is an arch that does not stand on Fleet Street any more, having been a hindrance to modern traffic, but being such an important London monument, was reassembled at Paternoster Square, immediately north of St. Paul's Cathedral.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Bar,_London#/media/File:PaternosterSquare-TempleBar.jpg

This is how the Temple Bar looked when it was on the road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Bar,_London#/media/File:Temple_Bar_ILN_1870.jpg

This statue is now on the spot where the Temple Bar once stood as a gateway. I believe it marks the boundary between what was London and Westminster. On the London side was Fleet Street, on the Westminster side was The Strand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Bar,_London#/media/File:Temple_Bar_Marker,_London_1.jpg

Near, but not on, the Royal Route are a few buildings that I would like to mention. The Guildhall could be referred to as London's town hall, with the Great Hall where meetings can be held. Mansion House is where the Lord Mayor of London lives. The Royal Exchange is traditionally where a spokesman for the king would make announcements to the people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildhall,_London#/media/File:Guildhall,_Londres,_Inglaterra,_2014-08-11,_DD_139.JPG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildhall,_London#/media/File:Guildhall,_City_of_London_-_Diliff.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansion_House,_London#/media/File:Mansion_House_London.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansion_House,_London#/media/File:Egyptian_Hall_Mansion_House_edited.jpg

The building on the right in the following image is the Royal Exchange, where royal announcements were made to the people, the stone building across the street is the Bank of England.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2199395

The Temple area of London, along the Royal Route, is so-named for Temple Church. This church was the church of the Knights Templar in England, and was built at the time of the Crusades. The Knights Templar were an extremely powerful and influential order of knights that were formed to protect and assist pilgrims to the Holy Land. We saw the Knights Templar in the posting on this blog, "Symbolism Theory Of The Vatican And Hagia Sophia". The original part of the church is circular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Church#/media/File:Temple_Church,_Temple,_London_EC4_(2).jpeg

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3168117

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1223099

The reason that it is cylindrical is because of the Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which the Crusaders considered as Solomon's Temple, hence the name of the church and the section of London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_of_the_Rock#/media/File:Dome_of_the_Rock,_1546.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_of_the_Rock#/media/File:Jerusalem-2013(2)-Temple_Mount-Dome_of_the_Rock_(SE_exposure).jpg

Look how the inside of the round part of Temple Church resembles the inside of the Dome of the Rock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Church#/media/File:Temple_Church_edited.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dome_of_the_Rock#/media/File:Inside_the_Dome_of_the_Rock.jpg

We can also see this cylindrical imitation of the Dome of the Rock in the Mosta Rotunda, that we saw in the posting on this blog, "Malta And Jerusalem".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotunda_of_Mosta#/media/File:Domen_i_Mosta.jpg

In 1215, King John met with the barons in the Temple Church, and it led to the signing of the Magna Carta, which was definitely the beginning of modern democracy. The Knights Templar ended in 1307, and the church became the property of the Knights Hospitaller, which we saw in "Malta And Jerusalem". All of this was, of course, long before then-Catholic England went with the Reformation.

The Temple area is England's legal center. The Royal Courts of Justice opened in 1882. Another famous courthouse, affectionately called "The Old Bailey" for the street where it is located, is nearby.

Remember the British practice of giving nicknames to prominent buildings, some of which are less-than-complimentary. Venerable old buildings tend to get treated with respect, but modern buildings sometimes don't. In our visit to "Glasgow", we saw the new concert hall that is nicknamed "The Armadillo", because it is built in sections.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4300018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Courts_of_Justice#/media/File:Royal_Courts_of_Justice_(42160910002).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Courts_of_Justice#/media/File:Royal_Courts_of_Justice_(6201094569).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bailey#/media/File:Oldbaileylondon-900.jpg

Legal professionals, called lawyers in North America, are divided here into either solicitors or barristers. A barrister must belong to one of four of what are called "Inns of Court". The four are equal and all have their headquarters in the Temple area of London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inns_of_Court#/media/File:London-Inns-of-Court.JPG

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4139068

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1266694

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3827089

Moving west beyond where the Temple Bar once stood, we enter Westminster where the street is now named The Strand. There are two churches that are on "islands" in The Strand, "St. Clement Danes" and "St. Mary Le Strand". Both of these extremely old churches are actually on "islands", in the middle of the road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Clement_Danes#/media/File:St_Clement_Danes,_Strand_(geograph_5590980).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_le_Strand#/media/File:1236753-St_Mary_le_Strand.JPG

Next on The Strand is King's College. This was established in 1829 as a religious answer to the secular University College, although both were component colleges of the University of London. There are other campuses of King's College but the one on The Strand is the main campus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_London#/media/File:KCL_King%27s_Building_3_Final.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_London#/media/File:King%27s_College_London_Chapel_2,_London_-_Diliff.jpg

This side of King's College is facing away from The Strand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_London#/media/File:Strand102.jpg

Next to King's College, and partially occupied by it, is Somerset House. This structure has been so many things in it's history that it is difficult to keep track of. It started as a home of the nobility, but became a royal palace. Elizabeth I lived there before she was queen. It is the only building that I know of that was once a royal palace but has been decommissioned. Run by the government, it has hosted many government and military offices. Organizations like the Royal Society have occupied the building. Since the beginning of movies, a lot of filming has been done there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand,_London#/media/File:SomersetHousebyAnonpublAckermann%26Co1836.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_House#/media/File:Somerset_House,_Strand.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_House#/media/File:Somerset_House_Strand_London.jpg

The river was once closer to King's College and Somerset House, on the south side of The Strand, but land has been reclaimed from it. That project of reclaiming land from the river is the Victoria Embankment, where the gardens are located, between those two structures and the river.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Embankment_Gardens#/media/File:Victoria_Embankment_Gardens.jpg

The Eleanor Cross is a memorial to the wife of Edward I, who died in 1290. This is not the original cross but a Nineteenth-Century replica of it. Compare this with the Albert Memorial that we saw in the visit to "London".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_cross#/media/File:Old_Charing_Cross.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_cross#/media/File:Charing_Cross_railway_station.jpg

The original Eleanor Cross stood where the equestrian statue of Charles I now stands. This place is known as Charing Cross, and is considered as the geographic center of London. One of the most important transportation centers of London, Charing Cross Station, is nearby.

Charles I is looking down Whitehall, to the Banqueting House where he was executed, beyond that is Big Ben. The statue was actually made while he was king, but was hidden during the Protectorate. Oliver Cromwell ruled as Protector, although not as king, after the execution of Charles I, until the monarchy was restored and Charles II, son of Charles I, was installed as king. Charles II would be the last king to make the procession along this royal route.

This is Charles I, at Charing Cross which is considered as the geographical center of London. Do you remember the posting on this blog, "Hampton Court Palace And The King James Bible"? Charles I was the son of James I, for whom the King James Bible was named because he commissioned it.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1318959

Back when this used to be the processional route of newly-crowned monarchs, the route would then turn down Whitehall, toward Westminster. But that was last done in 1660, when Whitehall Palace was still there and long before the building of Buckingham Palace. So now the route would continue westward from Charing Cross, where the equestrian statue of Charles I is located, and go through the Admiralty Arch,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_Arch#/media/File:Arco_del_Almirantazgo,_Londres,_Inglaterra,_2014-08-11,_DD_186.JPG

along The Mall,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mall,_London#/media/File:The_Mall_London.jpg

to Buckingham Palace,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckingham_Palace#/media/File:Buckingham_Palace_from_gardens,_London,_UK_-_Diliff_(cropped).jpg

Has anyone ever noticed the Anglican Church symbolism in the Admiralty Arch, even though it was built as a memorial to Queen Victoria?

The lateral arc of the Admiralty Arch resembles the form of the Colonnades in St. Peter's Square. The Anglican Church was one of the Protestant churches that formed after the Reformation, but it was an attempt at compromise between the remaining Catholics in England and the Puritans who wanted to completely abolish anything to do with Catholicism.

The Anglican Church retained quite a bit of the Catholic liturgy, but was led by the British monarch and no longer by the pope. Even today, the Anglican Church is described as having a "high church" (Catholic) side, and a "low church" (Puritan) side. The Puritans who were not pleased with this arrangement left for Massachusetts, and that is where America's Pilgrims and Puritans came from.

Is that why the lateral arc in the Admiralty Arch curves, in a way similar to the Colonnades around St. Peter's Square, but leads to the British monarch, rather than to the pope? I cannot see this documented anywhere.

Also of the three arches in the Admiralty Arch, the one in the middle is gated and reserved for royalty to pass through. This is symbolic of the Anglican Church in the middle, trying to be a compromise between Catholics on one side and Puritans on the other. There were extensive Anglican churches when America was a colony. When America declared independence, it was separated from the rest of the Anglicans, and renamed the Episcopal Church.
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