Thursday, January 2, 2025

Introduction To This Blog System

                                                                                                                      

Image used by permission

This is my main blog and all new postings are made here. Postings may be later combined into a compound posting on this blog. Many of the postings concern my observations in various branches of science, but there are also many on technology, religion, economics and, general world issues.

Blogs are organized to be read from top to bottom like a book. There is a list of the postings on each blog to the right of the blog, but you have to click on the months shown. Please use this listing to verify that you have seen all of the postings on the blog. The usual pace of this blog is 1-3 new postings per week.
 
I would really like to thank everyone who reads any of these blogs for your interest.
 
SCIENCE WRITING
 
Most of the postings on this blog are visits to various places around the world, and articles about such topics as history and religion. But much of the writing is about science. I do not write about what is already known but only if I can write something new, or at least a new way of looking at things. If the title of a posting has an asterisk* after it, that means that the posting has already been moved to it's permanent position and will later be deleted from here.
 
If you would like a quick background in the science and mathematics that everyone should really know in the 21st Century, the posting "Scientific Literacy" provides this in about a hundred paragraphs. Similarly, "The Way Things Work" provides a quick background in everyday technology.
 
I am a Christian and I want to show that belief in God is not unscientific at all. I was interested in science long before I was interested in religion, and have never had any trouble believing that God created everything.
 
There are five major scientific theories, each arranged in the form of a textbook. The first four of the following five are on this blog.
 
"The Theory Of Stationary Space" is my cosmological theory of how so much revolves around time being explained by us being in four-dimensional space, with the dimension that we cannot access being perceived as time. This is my version of string theory, with matter actually being strings in four dimensions rather than particles in three dimensions. Everything is ultimately based on negative and positive electric charges, with energy being able to overcome the laws of attraction and repulsion of electric charges. No one has ever explained exactly what time is, and a myriad of explanations of other things fall right into place around it.
 
"The Flow Of Information Through The Universe" is about how so much can be explained by seeing how there is a limited amount of information, and it must be the same information that constructs the highest levels as the lowest levels. A ready example is how the orbits of planets around the sun is based on the orbitals of electrons around the nucleus, in the atoms of which the sun and planets are composed. This concept is extremely useful because, understanding this, we can study things that we cannot directly see by analyzing things that we can see because all must be built on the same information.
 
"The Theory Of Complexity" is about what information actually is, how energy and information is really the same thing, and how we see the universe as we do because of our perspective of being at a higher level of information than our inanimate surroundings.
 
"The Lowest Information Point" is about how, since information and energy is really the same thing and the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, it also always seeks the "Lowest Information Point". So much is explained by how the universe prefers equalities to inequalities and related ratios where the numerator of one ratio is also the denominator of the other. This explains so much from why dust particles are as big as they to why the planets and stars are the scale that they are.
 
"The Story Of Planet Earth", on the geology blog, is about how virtually every major feature of the earth's surface, both on land and seafloor, can be explained by lines of magma emergence from below that were affected by the landing of three Continental Asteroids. Many people believe that land originated from a past "super-continent", but there is no explanation of where it came from.
 
There are a few of what we could call "minor" theories, where there is not as much written as with the major theories. On this blog, there is "How Biology And Human Life Fits Into Cosmology". On the meteorology and biology blog, there is my theory of the nature of water, "Water Made Really Simple".
 
There are compound postings about science which are groupings of writing about a certain topic.
 
Scientific compound postings include, "Computer Science", "Atomic Science", "Measurement", "A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law", "Our Solar System", "Mind-Bending Cosmology", "The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple", "In Appreciation Of Electrons", "The Science Of Human Society " and "Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts from Space".
 
Compound postings about history and the world include "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", "Niagara Stories", "Economics", "How History Repeats Itself", "The Meaning Of Freedom", "The Western Hemisphere", "Our Language" and, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris".
 
There are two compound postings about prophecies and the Bible. There is "The Aztec Prophecy" than, for prophecies that are directly made in the Bible there is "New Insight Into Bible Prophecy".
 
"Investigations" is the compound posting that is a collection of any posting about an investigation.
 
The rest of the postings are individual postings. For more detailed information about this blog, see the posting "About This Blog". For general topics of conversation, see "Thoughts And Observations", on the world and economics blog.  

Other Blogs And Books

                                                                      

Lights at night 

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.

On this blog, you can see a list of all postings by clicking on the year or month to the right. But on the topical blogs, that is not the case. If you click on a year or month on those blogs, it will display the postings themselves, but the list on the right will still only show those postings that were added most recently.

To access a list of all postings on those blogs, it is necessary to click on the arrow in front of the year or month in question.

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ is my geology and global natural history blog for topics other than glaciers. My natural history blogs concerning the impact of glaciers is http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

 http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

 http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.

http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

On my photo blogs, Blogspot will not hold all of the photos in each blog in a straight line. To see all of the photos, you must click on the bottom posting listed on the right at the top of the blog after seeing all that there are in the initial showing. The last posting in the North America blog should be "Tijuana, Mexico" and the last posting in the Europe blog should be "Notre Dame Cathedral Door And Arc De Triomphe, Paris". Each photo in the photo blogs can be clicked on to enlarge it to full screen.

My autobiography is http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek".   

Nairobi, Kampala And, Kigali

With the death of Jimmy Carter let's visit these cities in east Africa because I believe that it was the military operation at Entebbe that inspired the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran that likely cost Carter reelection.

Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. It's location is high in elevation. Despite it's importance as a global city, Nairobi is barely a century old.

Here is central Nairobi. The Kenyatta International Conference Center is named for the founder of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. His son was later president.  Another familiar name from Kenya is that of it's second president, Daniel Arap Moi. The first scene is the helipad, on the roof.

The first five images of central Nairobi 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/@-1.2887573,36.8231644,3a,75y,25.53h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMwpp0Q_P9san2fsvzgIpmDExIqlfLtIDzOD9H6!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMwpp0Q_P9san2fsvzgIpmDExIqlfLtIDzOD9H6%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya278.52518-ro0-fo100!7i9216!8i3618

This is the area around Uhuru Park, across the street from the Kenyan Parliament Buildings. Uhuru means "freedom" in Swahili. The first two images of Uhuru Park are from Google Street View.





https://www.google.com/maps/@-1.2624519,36.801971,3a,75y,97.5h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOjHOX1FOw5hIKRgbW-EBaMf8tXLe5dgMJWrjiz!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOjHOX1FOw5hIKRgbW-EBaMf8tXLe5dgMJWrjiz%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya36.5-ro-0-fo100!7i8192!8i4096

Kampala, the capital city of neighboring Uganda, is known as an exceptionally nice place to live. This is central Kampala. The first four images of central Kampala are from Google Street View.





https://www.google.com/maps/@0.3151313,32.5817941,3a,75y,210.57h,90t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1svO1XPbQhjMxM_ddirAB-YQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DvO1XPbQhjMxM_ddirAB-YQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D210.5731%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100

There is actually a semi-autonomous kingdom that exists within Uganda. It was once abolished, after Ugandan independence, but later allowed to be reinstated. The kingdom is known as Buganda, and it has a king and queen. The following scenes begin at the entrance way to the Kabaka Palace of Buganda. It is within the city of Kampala. The first image, of the entrance to the palace, is from Google Street View.





https://www.google.com/maps/@0.3408899,32.603091,3a,75y,175.5h,90t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sX22NB7zC-i4uutFFVzL6PQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DX22NB7zC-i4uutFFVzL6PQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D175.5%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100

For a small and pleasant country, Uganda used to be in the news all the time. The news usually revolved around some very colorful characters.

Milton Obote was president of Uganda until he was overthrown, in 1971, by an army officer named Idi Amin, who may have been the world's most colorful character of the 1970s. In 1972, Amin expelled tens of thousands of Asian residents who were not citizens of Uganda, almost all Indians. Most observers now say that this was very detrimental to the country, as the Asian settlers had run a lot of businesses.

In late June, 1976, an Air France jet was hijacked by the Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine. The passengers and crew would be freed in exchange for a list of prisoners being held in Israeli jails. Idi Amin, who had previously been a supporter of Israel, surprised everyone by welcoming the plane to Entebbe Airport, just south of Kampala. Entebbe would soon become probably the most famous airport in the world.

The majority of the hostages were freed but more than a hundred, who had a connection to Israel or who declined to be released, were held in a building at the airport. The hijackers included two German leftists, and Idi Amin personally visited them.

In a sudden operation, on July 4 while America was celebrating it's bicentennial, Israel dispatched about 100 commandos aboard planes which landed at the airport at night. Two of the hostages were killed in error, being mistaken for hijackers, but the rescue operation was a success. Part of the operation included a black Mercedes similar to the one used by Idi Amin.

The only Israeli commando killed in the mission happened to be the brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.

There were a lot of repercussions to the raid. The president of neighboring Kenya had allowed the Israeli planes to refuel at Nairobi. Idi Amin retaliated by having more than two hundred Kenyans who were living in Uganda killed. That is the side of Entebbe that is not well-known.

South of Kampala, on a peninsula extending into Lake Victoria, this is the area around Entebbe Airport. All looks peaceful and quiet today.

https://www.google.com/maps/@0.0391051,32.4491766,3a,75y,238.1h,90t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1scfnw3vTwqo6_68xPy_Hf6g!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dcfnw3vTwqo6_68xPy_Hf6g%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D238.0984%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100

The colorful era of Idi Amin could not last forever. Ugandans who were opposed to his rule, including Milton Obote who Amin had overthrown, had sought sanctuary in neighboring Tanzania. The government of Idi Amin retaliated by seizing a border area of Tanzania. The government of Tanzania responded by sending it's army, along with the Ugandan exiles, into Uganda. I remember watching the news that they had captured Kampala and Idi Amin left the country by helicopter.

Milton Obote regained his presidency, but was ultimately overthrown again by Yoweri Museveni, the current president. He would not allow Idi Amin to return without facing justice. Uganda is much quieter now, and is hardly ever in the news except as a nice place to visit.

Idi Amin, after time in Libya, spent the rest of his life in exile in Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. He died in 2003.

The first lady of Uganda, who Idi Amin had married when she was a teenager in a widely-publicized wedding, eventually settled into running a restaurant in London.

Another colorful character of Uganda is Joseph Kony, of the Lord's Resistance Army. He claimed to be a prophet of God and wanted to make Uganda into a Christian fundamentalist state, but his era seems to now be over.

Uganda's southern neighbor, Rwanda, is another beautiful country that has unfortunately been in the news. In 1994, there was a deadly conflict between the two primary ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. The conflict began when a plane carrying both the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi was shot down upon approach in Rwanda, killing both presidents.

The Hutu, the majority of the population, thought that the Tutsi wanted to revive their former monarchy under which the Hutu would be serfs while the Tutsi would be the nobility and royalty. The conflict continued until the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front managed to suppress the violence.

This is the central area of Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. The first six images of central Kigali are from Google Street View.






Remembering Jimmy Carter

I think Jimmy Carter was a pretty good president. He was seen as a political outsider, the Governor of Georgia without a lot of political connections in Washington. But that was just what the country wanted after the scandal of Watergate. 

As we saw in "Peace In The Middle East", August 2024, Carter resolved what was the first of three successive challenges to peace. This was the wars between nations, and he resolved it by bringing Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat (who would be assassinated because of it) together. The second stage was the wars between Israel and organizations, rather than nations, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This was resolved by Bill Clinton, by bringing together Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin (who would also be assassinated because of it). We are now in the third stage, the proxies of Iran against Israel.

Jimmy Carter was smart. I can't remember how many of his books I read. 

I didn't agree with everything that Jimmy Carter did. Boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan just made sure that there would be a boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It wasn't fair to the athletes.

He never should have gotten talked into the rescue mission for the hostages in Iran, in April 1980. The mission was way too complicated and everything they did had to work perfectly. There was virtually no margin of error, and we know that missions like that hardly ever go exactly according to plan. The hostages weren't even all in the same place, some were in the U.S. Embassy and others in the Foreign Ministry building. Israel had conducted a hostage rescue mission four years before but Entebbe was an isolated airfield while these hostages were in the middle of a big city.

Generals almost always want to take military action because that's what they do. It's the president's job to make the best decision. Harry Truman fired Douglas Macarthur because he kept overstepping his authority and pressing to escalate the Korean War. John F. Kennedy declined when Curtis LeMay wanted to bomb Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Jimmy Carter's popularity was fading toward the end of his term. He almost didn't even represent the Democrats in the 1980 Election but Edward Kennedy was derailed by a 1969 incident in which he was driving a car that went into water and a female passenger drowned. Kennedy had managed to get out of the car but allegedly didn't notify authorities about the crash for hours.

Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 Election in a landslide, and that was the end of his political career. But his real public life was only just beginning.

For the rest of his life, a president has the status of being an ex-president. No president in U.S. history has made better use of that status, to do good for the world, than Jimmy Carter. He has traveled the world promoting peace and trying to mediate conflicts. He has written some excellent books and has done a lot of construction work building houses with Habitat for Humanity.

If you put Jimmy Carter's presidency and post-presidency together, he was definitely one of the greatest of them all.

Jimmy Carter And The Iran Hostage Crisis

During the Iranian Revolution the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran was attacked by revolutionaries, on November 4, 1979, and the staff taken hostage. The hostages that were not released were being held during the 1980 election, which Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. What many people, including me, found really spooky is that the hostages were released just minutes after Reagan's inauguration, in January 1981. 

The Hostage Crisis is widely believed to be what cost Jimmy Carter the election. The story soon emerged that Reagan's team had communicated with the Iranians to get them to continue holding the hostages until after Election Day, so that Reagan would win the election. An investigation by the U.S. Congress didn't find anything amiss but the President of Iran at the time, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, said that this story was true and the Reagan Administration was later found to be secretly selling weapons to Iran, for use in it's war against Iraq.

What emerged later is that former Texas Governor John Connolly visited several countries in the Middle East in the summer of 1980, although not Iran. He reportedly told government officials in those countries that the Iranians should hold onto the hostages until after Election Day because they would get a better deal from Reagan, if he won the election. He was hoping that the message would be relayed to Iran.

John Connolly earlier oversaw the exit of America from the Gold Standard. This was done in 1971, before Carter's presidency, but it almost always results in significant inflation, and this is what was so destructive to the Carter presidency. Connally was apparently hoping that the stunt in the Middle East would get him a position in Reagan's cabinet.

If you have heard the name of John Connally it may be because he was the Texas Governor in the car with President John F. Kennedy when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Over a month before the 1980 election full scale war broke out between Iraq and Iran. Border clashes had been going on for several months prior to that. Each side blamed the other but Iraq is generally considered to have initiated the war. 

With Iran actually being invaded the American hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the Iranian Revolution and those guarding the hostages were needed at the battlefront. It does indeed look like the Iranians were given some reason to continue holding them, such as a Reagan promise to sell them weapons.

This makes Jimmy Carter look better than ever. Not only was the "stagflation" of his term not his fault but the other great negative of his term, the Iran Hostage Crisis, was purposely engineered to cost him the presidency.

The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran, on November 4, 1979, was not entirely a surprise. I recall reading that Carter himself had mentioned the possibility of the revolutionaries seizing the embassy before the overthrown and exiled Shah of Iran was admitted to the U.S. for cancer treatment, which is what prompted the seizure of the embassy. The revolutionaries were demanding his return to Iran to stand trial.

Jimmy Carter got the blame for it but he actually didn't want to admit the Shah to the U.S. It was the Republicans who insisted on letting him in. I wonder now if what they really wanted was for the embassy to be seized, in the hope that the crisis would cost Carter the presidency.

But if the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War was the catalyst for the release of the hostages, the mystery is why it took another four months for them to be released. The war began on September 22, 1980 and the hostages were released on January 20, 1981. The hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point and their guards were needed at the battlefront.

As it turns out the hostages were released right on America's Inauguration Day, January 20, 1981. Almost as soon as new president Ronald Reagan had finished his inauguration speech came the announcement from Iran that the hostages were being released. Algeria had been mediating the crisis and the hostages were flown from Tehran on Algerian planes.

This aroused the suspicion of many people. The Iran-Iraq War began on September 22. America's election day, November 7, was well over a month away. But if the hostages were released before election day it would likely have saved the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The suspicion was that Ronald Reagan's people had somehow made a deal with those holding the hostages to hold them, not only until after election day but until after Reagan's Inauguration, to be sure that Jimmy Carter's Democrats didn't get any credit for getting them released.

The U.S. Congress conducted the investigation but didn't find anything to substantiate the suspicions.

But then the next thing we know the Reagan Administration was found to be secretly selling weapons to Iran, for use in it's long war with Iraq, and using the profits to assist the Contras in Nicaragua.

Doesn't it look like Reagan's people made a deal with the Iranians holding the hostages to keep them until after Reagan's Inauguration, and then Reagan would sell urgently-needed weapons to Iran for it's war with Iraq? During the time of the Shah America had supplied weapons to Iran and, now that diplomatic relations had been broken by the Hostage Crisis, Iran was short of weapons when the unexpected war with Iraq began.

Some might think that maybe the Iranians were mad at Jimmy Carter's Democrats, for allowing the exiled Shah into the country, but not Reagan's Republicans, and that is why the hostages were held until Reagan actually took office on Inauguration Day.

But that doesn't make sense because it was in the news that Jimmy Carter actually didn't want to admit the Shah to the U.S. for cancer treatment, thinking correctly that it would mean trouble. It was the Republicans who insisted that America must not abandon an "old friend", and got the Shah admitted. The U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized soon afterward.

If there was a secret alliance between the Reagan Administration and Iran it didn't last. In 1987 there were naval clashes between the two in the Persian Gulf. 

But the scenario we have discussed here is just a little bit spooky, and still seems so after more than forty years, and it makes the presidency of Jimmy Carter look better than ever.

REMEMBERING THE HOSTAGE CRISIS

The former embassy is now a museum. The first of the following scenes show the "Glass Room" in the embassy where discussions could be held securely. The clear walls were so they could be sure they were not being bugged. The rest of the scenes are of the neighborhood in Tehran today. The red brick building with two columns in the doorway and bars on the windows are the front of the building. The Great Seal of the U.S. is still there.

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/@35.707595,51.4238617,3a,75y,106.55h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMsHKUwUir0035CGCO4fd-izibaywRQP_Ax13Th!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMsHKUwUir0035CGCO4fd-izibaywRQP_Ax13Th%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya267.59924-ro0-fo100!7i5376!8i2688?hl=en

At Desert One, the site of the April 1980 hostage rescue attempt, the Iranians have built a mosque and it is the site of religious pilgrimages. The green bus is the one that happened across the rescue attempt and the Iranian passengers were temporarily held. I think what happened to this rescue mission is that the helicopters had been on ships at sea for months, ready for such a mission, and the salt air had corroded their components.

These images are from Google Earth and Street View.

The remaining aircraft and bus are visible on Google Earth.






If the mission had continued, a team in trucks would free the hostages at the U.S. Embassy, indicated by the red dot at lower right in the following image. They would be taken to a nearby sports field, indicated by the white dot in upper right, where the helicopters would land. An airfield would be temporarily taken over. Both the planes and helicopters would land and the hostages would transfer from the helicopters to the planes.

Does anyone remember when there were prayers across America? The Iran Hostage Crisis was not about military strength, it was a hostage situation. There were prayer meetings for them across America. After the rescue attempt failed the prayers continued, and all was not lost.

As it turned out, help would come from an unexpected direction. Neighboring Iraq, glad to be rid of the Shah of Iran, at first expressed support for the Iranian Revolution. But then Ayatollah Khomeini, the main opponent of the Shah who had spent years in exile in Iraq teaching Shiite students in Najaf, made it clear that he wanted new Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein overthrown by Iraq's majority Shiite population.

Border clashes took place between the two nations, with each side blaming the other. In September 1980, it turned into full-scale war. With Iran actually being invaded, the hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the revolution. Those who were guarding the hostages were needed at the battlefront, and the hostages were soon released.

Jimmy Carter And "Stagflation"

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has died at age  100. He was the president during the Iranian Revolution and Hostage Crisis, which is widely seen as ruining his chances for reelection. To remember him, and the notorious "stagflation" that I see him as getting unfairly blamed for, let's start with the Gold Standard.

Have you ever wondered why America never seems to have to worry about maintaining the value of it's currency? In 2022 we saw Russia prop up the value of the rouble by insisting that payment for hydrocarbon fuels be made in roubles, which maintained demand for the currency. The Bank of England later took action to prop up the pound. The value of a currency, unless it is "pegged" to something, operates by supply and demand.

Near the end of the Second World War, in the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, America took advantage of it's position on the winning side and as the only major nation not seriously damaged by the war, to get the dollar as the world's reserve currency. This ensured that there would always be demand for U.S. dollars and thus there would never be concern about propping up the dollar's value.

The Bretton Woods agreement also meant convertibility of the dollar into gold. The Gold Standard is a system that is no longer used by any country in the world. The Gold Standard is the idea of basing a country's money on gold in order to provide currency stability. This used to be done by either actually making coins out of gold or, more often, issuing paper currency notes that are defined in value as being equivalent to a given quantity of gold. The notes may or may not be redeemable in gold on demand.

When a country begins printing money, particularly if it is a new country that came into being by fiat or upheaval, there may not be a lot of confidence in it's money. Backing the currency with gold provides the confidence that is necessary for the functioning of the economy. Backing a currency with gold also provides currency stability in troubled times, limiting any swings in value. If we want to virtually eliminate inflation, all we have to do is to peg the currency to gold.

But the Gold Standard also has disadvantages. It limits the power of a government to stimulate the economy by manipulating the currency supply. If all currency issued has to be backed by actual gold, the government cannot just print money as it sees fit. The Gold Standard did not prevent the 1929 crash and Great Depression that followed, and it is no secret that countries that were on the Gold Standard at the time, including the U.S., took longer to recover from the crash than those that were not on it. The Gold Standard presumes that the price of gold itself is ideally stable which, of course, it isn't.

If the U.S. was on the Gold Standard today, the so-called quantitative easing done by the Federal Reserve Bank to bring about recovery from the crash of 2008 and the Great Recession would not have been possible. This refers to the government putting money into the economy by the purchasing of bonds to keep interest rates low by increasing the money supply so that business can more easily get loans to start or expand.

The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 was to set up the postwar international economic structure by pegging various national currencies to the U.S. dollar, which was pegged to gold. This got the postwar world on track until the arrangement became outdated and countries began leaving it. 

In a landmark event, known as the "Nixon Shock", U.S. president Richard Nixon took the dollar off the Gold Standard on August 15, 1971, this effectively ended Bretton Woods and today no nation uses the Gold Standard. But the U.S. dollar still has the momentum of being the world's reserve currency.

Next, let's have a look at former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976, was a Democrat and had nothing to do with the Gold Standard because Nixon had taken the dollar off it in 1971 and his vice president and successor, Gerald Ford, had redefined the dollar with gold not being part of the definition.

Carter has really been treated unfairly by history. The term associated with his presidency, in the late 1970s, is "stagflation", meaning a toxic mixture of stagnation and inflation. We usually see inflation in the economy when it is growing, but President Carter supposedly mismanaged the economy into a high rate of destructive inflation without the growth.

This is nonsense and is the result of Reagan-era Republican propaganda from the 1980 election. The high rate of inflation during Carter's presidency was the result of the exit from the Gold Standard, combined with a perfect storm of other events which took place before Carter took office.

First, there was the spending on the Great Society social programs of the 1960s. This produced prosperity at the time, although inflation afterward. There was massive government spending on the Vietnam War, and for programs like the Apollo Space Program. Then, after Nixon had taken the dollar off the Gold Standard, there was the Oil Embargo of 1973 followed by a steep climb in the price of fuel. As we know only too well, when fuel gets expensive it not only cuts into everyone's purchasing power, but it makes everything else more expensive because the transportation costs of products factor in with production costs.

When a currency is taken off the Gold Standard, the government is free to print currency at will and it's value "floats" with the total value of goods and services produced in the economy divided by the amount of currency printed. Printing money can thus be expected to bring about inflation.

Have you ever stopped to think how natural inflation is? It is self-perpetuating. Workers are given periodic pay raises or cost of living adjustments to keep up with inflation. But this is actually what causes inflation. The currency in circulation exactly matches in value the total of goods and services being produced. So if there is an increase in the money supply, brought about by pay raises, without a corresponding increase in production, the inevitable result is inflation.

A very moderate amount of inflation, maybe a couple of percent per year, is not necessarily a bad thing because it acts as a cushion against deflation, which is worse than inflation. If prices are deflating, it doesn't make sense to manufacture things because, by the time they can be sold, the manufacturer might have to sell the goods for less than it cost to make them.

The Gold Standard became outmoded in the modern world, but leaving the standard brings a certain amount of risk because it almost inevitably results in inflation when the currency supply is no longer constricted. The most notorious inflation that the world has ever seen is, of course, Germany in the 1930s. According to the article on the Gold Standard on Wikipedia, this was the result of the country being unable to return to the Gold Standard because of it's gold reserves being depleted by First World War reparations payments.

These factors all converged on Jimmy Carter's presidency, but in no way were they his fault. I am not faulting Nixon for taking the country off the Gold Standard in 1971, actually it should have been done sooner. Neither am I faulting Ronald Reagan for purposely inducing the recession of the early 1980s, because that was the only way to get the resulting inflation under control.

But blaming this on Jimmy Carter is like blaming the government for a hurricane. Reagan's rightward economics is what it took to stop the inflation that had been unleashed by the end of the Gold Standard, and it's convergence with the other spending factors, but he stayed too far right throughout the 1980s and it resulted in the Crash of 1987.

Let's remember Jimmy Carter as a very good president.

The Fifth Force

It is generally considered that the operation of the universe revolves around four basic forces. Gravity runs the universe on a large scale. Electromagnetism holds the oppositely charged particles in atoms together and forms electromagnetic waves. The Strong Nuclear Force binds quarks together into protons and neutrons and those together into atomic nuclei. The Weak Nuclear Force is involved in radioactive decay, where an unstable nucleus emits particles or radiation in order to attain a more stable state.

The least important to us of the four is certainly the Weak Nuclear Force. The ordinary fusion process in stars only goes as far as iron. A star is born when enough mass is pulled together by it's mutual gravity to overcome the electron repulsion that keeps atoms separate and crunch smaller atoms into larger ones. But the new larger atom has less internal energy than the ones that were crunched together to form it. The excess energy is released as radiation and that is why stars shine. As time goes on, successively heavier elements are being crunched together by the fusion. This means that more energy per time is being released and this upsets the equilibrium of the star. The largest stars will eventually explode in a supernova. The tremendous amount of energy released by a supernova fuses together atoms that wouldn't ordinarily be fused together and this is how all elements heavier than iron are formed. This is why elements heavier than iron are exponentially less common than iron and lighter elements.

But some of these new heavier elements that were forced together by the energy released by the supernova are less-than-stable, and gradually release particles or radiation in order to attain a more stable state. These emissions are known as radioactivity and are governed by the Weak Nuclear Force.

The forces work against each other. It is as if gravity and the Strong Nuclear Force team up against electromagnetism and the Weak Nuclear Force. The Strong Nuclear Force overcomes electromagnetism to bind atomic nuclei together against mutually repulsive electric charges. A star is born when gravity can overcome electromagnetism and force atoms together against the mutual repulsion of electrons. The Weak Nuclear Force overcomes the Strong Nuclear Force to emit particles or radiation but only from large and unstable atoms that have been forced together by the energy released by a supernova. This could be why there is a theory that joins electromagnetism and the Weak Nuclear Force together. 

The stronger a force is, the shorter the distance over which it operates. The Strong Nuclear Force, as the name implies, is extremely powerful but operates only over extremely short distances. This is what limits the size of stable atomic nuclei. Electromagnetism, such as which binds electrons to atomic nuclei, is weaker but has a much longer range. 

Gravity, by comparison, is an exceedingly weak force. A small magnet, using the electromagnetic force, can lift a piece of steel against the gravity of the entire earth. If the two largest ships in the world were docked side-by-side, there would be only about one kg of gravity between them. But yet it's gravity that governs the universe on a large scale, because it has unlimited range.

This has led me to wonder if all the basic forces are really manifestations of the same thing, with the fundamental force being electromagnetism. Just like a lever exchanges force for distance, and we can change the distance by grasping the lever at different points.

But I see a fifth basic force.

There is no energy in the basic forces themselves, they only direct energy. Whenever there is energy we can see which basic forces are involved. If we throw a ball up in the air, so that it comes back down with force, we are just getting the energy back that we put into the ball in the first place, as redirected by gravity. 

The energy released by nuclear fission, the splitting of atoms, comes from the Strong Nuclear Force. The energy released by fusion would also include electromagnetism, because there is energy in the orbitals of the electrons that are crunched into protons to form neutrons. 

Radioactive decay, driven by the Weak Nuclear Force, releases energy and this is where geothermal energy and the energy released by volcanoes comes from. The energy from the decay of radioactive elements within the earth builds up as heat. 

Now here is a question.

We can see how energy is governed by the basic forces and, with any manifestation of energy, it can be explained which forces were involved. But what about the energy released in a matter-antimatter reaction? If equal amounts of matter and antimatter are reacted together, a fantastic amount of energy is released and both the matter and antimatter vanishes. Antimatter is the same as matter, but with the electrical charges reversed. Positively-charged positrons are in orbitals around a negatively-charged nucleus. 

Gravity or the Weak Nuclear Force couldn't have anything to do with it. The Strong Nuclear Force just holds together quarks into nucleons and then nucleons into nuclei, so that couldn't be behind the energy released in a matter-antimatter reaction in which all of the matter and antimatter vanishes including electrons. The electromagnetic force isn't anywhere near as strong as the Strong Nuclear Force and a matter-antimatter reaction releases far more energy per mass than even a nuclear reaction, so that couldn't be behind it.

None of our basic forces can govern the energy released in a matter-antimatter reaction. This can only mean that there must be a fifth basic force. In my cosmology theory everything, both space and matter, is composed of near-infinitesimal negative and positive electric charges. The basic rule of the charges is that opposite charges attract while like charges repel. 

The lowest energy state is a checkerboard of alternating negative and positive charges in multiple dimensions, and that is what empty space is. Energy can overcome the mutual repulsion to hold like charges together and this is how particles, such as electrons, are formed. It is why the fundamental particles, electrons and protons, have electric charges. This energy that holds like charges together to form matter is what gives matter it's mass and this is what we refer to as the Mass-Energy Equivalence. It is described by Einstein's famous formula, E = MC squared.

It also means that there must be a Fifth Force governing this energy, since none of the other forces can account for it. The energy is released if matter and antimatter is reacted together, and the component electric charges rearrange themselves into the alternating checkerboard pattern of empty space. The energy that is released then goes to opposing the attractive force between opposite charges in space, which is what electromagnetic waves are and why a matter-antimatter reaction emits a burst of such waves.

This is by far the most powerful of the basic forces and, as we should expect, operates only over by far the shortest distances, between the individual electric charges that comprise space. This fits with what we saw above, that the more powerful the force the shorter the distance over which it operates. 

As it is generally seen now the Strong Nuclear Force is, as the name implies, the strongest of the four basic forces but it operates only over extremely short distances, within nucleons and joining nucleons together into the nucleus. But this is not the shortest possible distance. The shortest practical distance is considered to be Planck's Length, and it shows up in a number of physics formula. 

So wouldn't it make sense that there should be a basic force that operates only over the very shortest distances? Shouldn't every distance scale have it's own force? As it is now there is a "distance gap" that has no basic force of it's own.

If there was such a force that operated only over the very shortest distances then it should be by far the strongest of the forces. This is exactly what this Fifth Force is. It operates on the scale of the fundamental electric charges, which is where Planck's Length comes from.

I see electromagnetism as the most basic force. This Fifth Force overcomes electromagnetism to bind like charges together, against their mutual repulsion, to create the fundamental charged particles of matter, such as electrons. The two basic rules of electric charges are that opposite charges attract while like charges repel. This Fifth Force overcomes the repulsive force so that it must leave a net attractive force involving matter. This net attractive force is what we refer to as gravity. So this Fifth Force actually creates gravity. 

What is interesting is that each of the basic forces is mediated by a particle. Electromagnetism by photons, the Strong Nuclear Force by gluons, and the Weak Nuclear Force by W and Z Bosons. But what about gravity? It is theoretically mediated by "gravitons", but none have ever been detected. Could it be because gravity is actually a manifestation of this Fifth Force? 

The energy directed by this Fifth Force, holding like electric charges together against their mutual repulsion to form the charged particles of matter, comes from the radiation released during the Big Bang. This is electromagnetic radiation so that this Fifth Force is also mediated by photons. This indeed makes it look like Electromagnetism is the most basic force and that both this Fifth Force and Gravity are manifestations of it.

An abbreviated version of the cosmology theory is "Cosmology Theory In Diagrams", January 2024.

The Holyland Model Of Jerusalem

In Jerusalem there is a scale model of the city around the time of Jesus.

The Jerusalem of ancient times revolved around the Temple. The First Temple had been built by King Solomon. It had lasted for about four hundred years until the Babylonians destroyed it and took the Jews into exile. When Persia conquered Babylon the Jews that wanted to were allowed to return and rebuild the Temple. But this Second Temple was not as elaborate as the First. 

During Roman times, Israel was ruled by a king named Herod. He was allowed to rule as long as he stayed in favor with the Romans. Herod was actually an Idumean, the area formerly known as Edom, that had been forcibly converted to Judaism. Herod decided to dismantle the Second Temple in order to build a much grander one.

The first two Temples had been built atop a hill called Mount Moriah. This was the site of two important events. It had been where Abraham had been willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and where God had halted a plague that had been sent as punishment because David had sinned by conducting a census. Herod built a massive retaining wall around Mount Moriah, this is what remains today as the Temple Mount, then he built the new Temple on it.

ALL IMAGES ARE FROM GOOGLE STREET VIEW

This is looking at the Temple from the east. The blue dot is on the Royal Stoa. Non-Jews were permitted in the open area, known as the Court of the Gentiles, but only Jews in the Inner Precinct indicated by the green dot. The red dot is on one of the four towers of the Antonia, the Roman fortress in Jerusalem.

In another view of the Temple from the east, the yellow dot is on the East Gate to the Temple Mount, the cubic structure indicated by the green dot is the Holy of Holies, and the red dot is on one of the four towers of the Antonia.

These two images, both from the east, are of the Holy of Holies, in the Inner Precinct. Only the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies and only on one day out of the year, Yom Kippur. The site is now occupied by the Dome of the Rock.


This is a closer look at the Royal Stoa. The red dot is where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is now located.

The is a closer look at the Antonia Fortress. It is generally believed that this is where Jesus' trial took place. The Temple Mount is to the left (south).

The Temple Mount is often pictured from the south. In the following two images the green dot indicates the south wall of the Temple Mount. The red dot indicates what was "downtown" Jerusalem at the time, and is now an archeological site known as the "City of David". The yellow dot indicates a residential neighborhood and the purple dot is the "Upper City", a wealthier neighborhood. At right, to the east, is the Kidron Valley.



In both of the following images, of the southern side of the Temple Mount, the two Huldah Gates are indicated by the red dots and the yellow dot shows where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is now located.



In the following image the two green dots show the doorways, at the top of the Temple Mount, where the stairs from the Huldah Gates emerged. In the southeastern part of the Temple Mount there is a "basement", supported by pillars, that used to be known as "Solomon's Stables", and is now the Al-Marwani Mosque.


The following image is of Herod's Palace. The three towers were named for people in Herod's life. The red dot is on Phasael. The yellow dot is on Hippicus and the blue dot is on Mariamne. The green dot in the background is on the Holy of Holies and the purple dot is on one of the towers of the Antonia.


In this image the red dot indicates Herod's Palace compound. The yellow dot, in the background, is on the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount.


In this image Herod's Palace is in the foreground and the western side of the Temple Mount is indicated by the red dot in the background. Today this is the Jewish site of worship, the Western Wall.


Ordinary people in Jerusalem lived in simple homes like these.



Just south of the Temple Mount the houses of ordinary people are in the foreground and the "Upper City" of wealthier people are in the background.


The Jews did have some privilege under Roman rule. The Romans generally respected their religion and, unlike other Roman territories, they were exempt from military service. With one power ruling the region, at least there was peace. Even so, the Jews hated being ruled by pagans and it ultimately exploded in rebellion. The Romans retaliated by ejecting the Jews from the land and destroying the Temple. The wealth looted from the Temple was used to build the Colosseum in Rome. Only the Temple Mount remained. 

Moslems later considered the Temple Mount as the third holiest place in Islam and built the two mosques, the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock there. The nation of Israel was reestablished in 1948 and the original city of Jerusalem came back under their control in 1967, but a Jordanian organization administers the Temple Mount.