America's Resolute Desk

I am going to make the claim that the wood from which the main desk used by U.S. presidents almost certainly came from my native Forest of Dean. The three images in this posting are from the Wikipedia article "Resolute Desk".

This is a drawing of the desk.

Most U.S. presidents in the last sixty years have used what is known as the Resolute Desk as their main working desk.

The desk has long been representative of the ties between the U.S. and Britain. This is Margaret Thatcher looking at the desk while visiting Jimmy Carter.

In the late Nineteenth Century a wooden British ship, HMS Resolute, was decommissioned and dismantled. Some items were constructed from the wood of the ship, since such ships were built of high-quality hardwoods.

Among those items was a desk that was gifted to the United States by Queen Victoria. It is the desk used by most presidents today as their main desk.

Britain is a densely-populated land, without a lot of forest. But, in the days of wooden ships, a naval power was absolutely dependent on having a supply of trees that were suitable for building ocean-going ships.

My native Forest of Dean was recognized as having the best-quality ship timber. The wood that built the Mayflower was cut from within walking distance of where I was born. The Forest of Dean was long Britain's strategic timber reserve, which is no doubt why it ended up being as well-preserved as it has.

Britain's two most prominent naval figures from the days of wooden ships, Sir Francis Drake and Admiral Nelson, were both very protective of the Forest of Dean.

Admiral Nelson wrote a letter to the king explaining how essential it is to protect this forest. Admiral Nelson gave his view that more oaks must be planted because acorns often get eaten by animals before they have the chance to grow into trees. He even requested that the navy be given supervision over this essential forest.

My conclusion is that it can be stated with near-certainty that the wood which comprises America's Resolute Desk, where some of the world's most important decisions are made and paperwork signed, originally came from the Forest of Dean.

Planes And Adjustable Wrenches

An important company in the early development of aircraft was the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company. For some reason, so many people misspelled it that it was shorted to "Gloster". It is unfortunate that the company is known for warplanes, rather than civilian aircraft, but during the Second World War the Allies fielded only one jet plane. It was the Gloster Meteor, and was made in my native Gloucestershire. Image from the Wikipedia article "Gloster Meteor".

Adjustable wrenches are found in toolboxes across the world, along with a hammer and screwdriver it is the most common tool. In some countries it is called a "spanner". Adjustable wrenches were invented in Gloucestershire by Edwin Budding, who also invented the lawnmower. Image from the Wikipedia article "Adjustable Spanner".

Charles Wheatstone was from Gloucester and his electric telegraph was the first step toward modern electronic communications.

The PIN Number Song

England has traditionally lagged in music. From central Europe came musical figures like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Paderewski. England didn't really have a music genre of it's own like Opera or Flamenco.

But it made up for it during the Rock Music era. What I wonder is how many people, who came of age during the late 1970s or early 1980s especially those with a connection to Britain, have used 5705 as a PIN number. This was the 1978 song from the Birmingham band called City Boy. They weren't well-known other than for this song.

Maybe the song, which is about a phone number, came a couple of decades too early. But when the technology came along that required coming up with a four-digit PIN number that we won't forget, how many people are there who immediately thought of 5705?

This song was made for PIN numbers.

English Occupational Names

I find it really interesting how daily life in England centuries ago is reflected in so many surnames in English-speaking countries today. These are the so-called "occupational names" that refer to the occupation of the bearer of the name or his descendants. The fact that a person has one of these names does not today mean that he or she has any English blood or any connection to England.

From the preparation of food come surnames like Miller, Baker, Cook and, Brewer. The construction of homes and other buildings gives us common names such as Carpenter, Mason, Sawyer, Plumber and, Thatcher. Those who procured or dealt in building materials might be tagged with names like Wood, Stone or, Clay.

The making of cloth and clothing gave us names which include Spinner, Weaver, Tanner, Taylor (the occupation now spelled "tailor") and, Shoemaker. The dying of cloth is probably the origin of the color names, the most common of which are Green, White, Black and, Brown.

General craftsmanship brought into being names such as Smith, Wright, Carver, and Cooper. Smith is a general industrial term for someone who works with something such as blacksmith or goldsmith. A wright is a builder of something such as boatwright. A cooper is a maker of those ubiquitous wooden barrels of years past.

There are names requiring no explanation such as Hunter, Archer, Planter, Fisher, Shepherd, Gardner and, Butler. The name Shepherd is today spelled in several different ways. Those involved in building or operating the vehicles of the day might be named Carter, Cartwright or, Wheeler. Those otherwise involved in transportation could be named Walker or Porter. Makers of music or musical instruments could be called Singer, Bugler, Bell or, Stringer. One who makes announcements or announces news may be named Crier.

Then there is the names associated with royalty, nobility or, status: King, Queen, Lord, Duke, Knight and, Freeman. People with these names would have worked for the national or local royalty or nobility in some way. There are several common surnames associated with religion like Church, Bishop and, Abbot. There are surnames like Barber, Minter and, Cutler. A minter is one who makes money (literally) and a cutler is one who makes knives. Finally, we have the terrain or location surnames including: Marsh, Field or Fields, Street, Rivers, Woods, Hill and, Park or Parker.

Notice that names such as Farmer, Miner and, Sailor are quite rare. This is self-explanatory. These occupations included so many people that if they were given to everyone in that particular line of work, the name would be so widespread as to be near-meaningless. The purpose of a name is, after all, to distinguish one from another. I get the impression that there was a lot of multitasking centuries ago and the name Smith is so common because it indicated a general craftsman or jack-of-all-trades.

These were all working-class names and would not be found in the upper classes. I find it significant that the religious names like Bishop and Abbot are those that would apply to Catholicism. There are few names that would have originated from the advent of the Protestant version of Christianity or with the printing industry, both of which became very important factors in the England of the 16th Century. I take this to mean that these occupation names had already become well-established a considerable amount of time before then.

Charles I And II

The present king is Charles III. Let's have a look at the first two King Charles. The two were father and son, during the Stuart Dynasty at a time of great turmoil. Charles I was overthrown and executed by the forces of Oliver Cromwell. The future Charles II famously escaped by hiding in an oak tree. Charles I was the son of James I, who we saw in the posting "Hampton Court Palace And The King James Bible", July 2016.

We saw "Along London's Royal Route", August 2024. The last time that this was used for a coronation procession was for Charles II. That was long before Buckingham Palace and the route ended at the former Whitehall Palace.

These two kings are important because the events of their time set the pace for how countries would be governed.

What is referred to as the English Civil War was actually several separate conflicts. The war resulted in the execution of King Charles I, and the exile of his son who would eventually reign as Charles II. The monarchy was replaced with first the Commonwealth of England and then the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell.

This interruption in the monarchy is sometimes referred to as the Interregnum and lasted from 1649-1660. What is known as the Restoration brought the monarchy back, and ended the Interregnum, in 1660. One parliament, known as the Rump Parliament, opposed the execution of Charles I. It was replaced by the Protectorate Parliament, but the rump parliament was brought back prior to the Restoration of the monarchy.

Oliver Cromwell, who ruled as Lord Protector during the interruption in the monarchy, turned down being king himself, which would have begun a new dynasty, because he thought it was his divine mission to abolish the monarchy. But after Cromwell's death, his son did not inspire the same confidence. This is what led to the end of the Interregnum and the Restoration of the monarchy.

Margaret Thatcher was a rightward modern political form of the Interregnum. Notice how history repeats itself in the similarity of the time and dates. The Interregnum lasted for eleven years, from 1649 to 1660. The term of Margaret Thatcher also lasted for eleven years and the dates were from one that ended with a 9 to one that ended with a 0, 1979 to 1990.

The English Civil War was fought between the Royalists, supporters of the monarchy, and the Parliamentarians, supporters of the parliament. The Royalists are sometimes referred to as Cavaliers, and the Parliamentarians as Roundheads. The Royalists won the early battles but the turning point seems to have been, in military terms, the Siege of Gloucester. The Royalists failed to capture Gloucester from the Parliamentarians, and after that it was they who won most of the battles.

The war ended with a Parliamentarian victory. The future King Charles II famously escaped, following defeat at Worcester, by hiding in an oak tree. His father, Charles I, was beheaded at the Banqueting House on January 30, 1649.

This war is usually portrayed in religious terms. The religious side of the war was that it was between the Puritan Parliamentarians and the Anglican Royalists.

This was 130 years after the Reformation had begun, but it was not a Protestant-Catholic conflict. It was between two factions of Protestants. The Puritans were extremely conservative Protestants who wanted nothing to do with any kind of compromise with Catholicism. The Anglicans, in contrast, thought it best to establish a national church that was a compromise between such extreme Protestants and the remaining Catholics.

But what I want to point out today is the very long-lasting political influence of this war. It literally changed the way that the world is governed.

The French Revolution, which came 140 years later, is generally considered as the launching of the modern political era. But this much lesser-known and less-widespread war is what set the precedence for it.

The French revolutionaries had a lot in common with the Puritans, even if they did want to abolish conventional religion. The military leader that Napoleon was, having his power base neither in royalty nor religion, had it's prototype in Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate which was direct military rule that was not subservient to either king or church.

The executions in France of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, their rule replaced by a series of committees, first the Committee of General Defense, then the Committee of Public Safety, then the Directory, followed by the military rule of Napoleon parallels the execution of Charles I, his rule replaced by the Committee of Safety to set the precedence of the country being governed as a republic, but being superceded by the military rule of Oliver Cromwell. The restoration of the Bourbon Dynasty after the time of Napoleon, relatives of the executed king, is very much a reflection of the restoration of the English monarchy, the son of the executed Charles I, after the time of Oliver Cromwell.

There was a lot of similarity between the organizations set up to administer the country after the execution of Charles I in England, the Committee of Safety which was set up by parliament, and the series of French revolutionary organizations which governed the country during the revolution. The French Royalty was executed and the National Assembly was ultimately formed to replace them, making the country a republic. In England in a similar way but over a century earlier, Charles I was executed by the forces of parliament, whose rule replaced his.

U.S. independence also followed exactly the same precedence except that it was called a congress, rather than a parliament or National Assembly, and a president was inaugurated as, in effect, a "temporary" king.

The Meiji Restoration in Japan, replacing the military rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate with the full power of the emperor, also greatly resembles the pattern of the monarchy being restored in England after military rule, two hundred years before. But with the emperor ultimately having less real power than before.

The monarchy in England was ultimately restored, Charles II being crowned as king. The Protectorate that had displaced and executed his father was dismantled. But when it was all over, the monarchy had less power than before and the parliament had more power than before. The king now needed the support of parliament, which represented the people. That is what set the pace for the modern world.

The brother of Charles II had the title of Duke of York. Charles gave him some lands in a newly-explored area of North America and that is where the name of New York comes from.

England had experienced being run as a republic, with power based on the will of the people and not on royalty or the church. The prototype of the modern leader from the military had been set. There was religious freedom that there hadn't been before.

After the Restoration of the monarchy, Parliament had more power than ever before. But there were differences of opinion between it's members. That is what led to the founding of modern political parties. The modern terms of political "right" and "left" began when members of Parliament used to sit on opposite sides of the aisle, according to their political views.

There was the definite influence of the Reformation on these changes. It was the removal of the monarch's "divine right to rule", just as the Reformation removed the divine right of anyone to rule over the church.

Some say that it was the Magna Carta that began modern democracy. But the peak of England's monarchy was Henry VIII (the eighth), which came three centuries after the Magna Carta. It was this English Civil War that really shifted the balance of power from the king to the Parliament, which was elected by and represented the people. The world has been governed differently ever since.

Religion would no longer be absolutely dictated by the monarch. Protestant churches mostly did away with the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church. Only Anglicans and Lutherans, the two Reformation movements that retained the most Catholic liturgy, still had bishops and archbishops. New denominations, such as the Baptists and Presbyterians and later the Methodists, were far more egalitarian and reflected the new movement towards democracy.

The divisions of the English Civil War can still be seen in the differences today between the cities and the countryside. It is said that America's great political division is between the Democrat coasts and the Republican "heartland". But England's is between urban and rural areas. This is the legacy of the power base of the Royalists being in the countryside, while that of the Parliamentarians was in the cities.

Local Tornadoes

I have noticed what causes the occasional tornadoes in the general Buffalo area.

I live within sight of a tall smokestack. I rarely look at the weather report because it is easy to tell what the weather will be by this smokestack. Obviously if the wind is from the north it will get colder and warmer if the wind is from the south, although probably without a major change in weather. Where I live the prevailing wind is from the west. A west wind may well bring a change in weather, although probably not a great change in temperature. 

What is interesting is when the prevailing wind is reversed, so that the wind is from the east. This happens rarely and only when there is some major storm system in the eastern U.S., although it may be calm here. The remnants of hurricanes along the east coast can reverse the prevailing wind.

I have written about this occasional reversal of the prevailing wind here before. It is this reversal, between the two wind directions, that produces the local tornadoes. 

We saw in "The Inverse Topological Rule", July 2024, the cosmology of tornadoes. When some entity in the universe induces another entity, the induced entity will have a topology that is opposite to that of the original entity. The earth is spherical and it's spin is what induces tornadoes. This is why a tornado, or the whirlpool that forms when you drain a sink full of water, has the topological form of half a pseudosphere, which is the opposite of a sphere.

The Emirates Canal

With all of the fuss about the Strait of Hormuz, and also remember what a global issue it was during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan sent warships to make sure that it stayed open. This could be a golden opportunity for the United Arab Emirates. If the Emirates can build the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, and send a spacecraft to Mars, then why couldn't it build a canal that would circumvent the troublesome Strait of Hormuz?

In the following image, from Google Earth, Iran is at the top and the United Arab Emirates is at the bottom. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow waterway between the two. The red line could be a canal that would enable ships to avoid the Strait, with it's western entrance between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. This would certainly lower insurance rates for the ships and enable the Emirates to charge tolls. Regardless of how much money it made it would boost the Emirates position in the world.

A Journey Across Siberia

Russia is by far the largest country in the world, in terms of geographical land area. The country spans two continents. The western part of Russia is in Europe and the eastern part in Asia. The dividing line between the two continents is the Ural Mountains. Siberia is usually defined as the part of Russia that is in Asia.

Did you know that when you look at a full moon you are looking at an area that is just about exactly the size of Russia?

As far as physical geography goes, Europe and Asia are not really separate continents. It is more like Eurasia is one land mass. But there is a definite division between the two with regard to history and culture and, for this reason, we usually consider Europe and Asia as separate continents.

Siberia is a vast land area, comprising maybe 1 / 7 of the earth's total land area. But it is, on the average, sparsely populated. The European part of Russia is only about 1 / 4 of Russia's total land area, but has about 3 / 4 of the country's population.

While the average population density of Siberia is low it's population is concentrated in cities with the southern, and warmer, part of the region holding most of the population. Russia's two most populous cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, are both in European Russia, but the next two cities by population are in Siberia.

Siberia is known today for being very rich in resources. Much of the region is seafloor that was forced upward by tectonic movement, which made room for oil and natural gas to collect underground. Aside from energy, there are also vast mineral resources.

It was in the Sixteenth Century that the Rurik Dynasty of Russia began to explore and build outposts in lands far to the east of Moscow. This policy was continued by the following Romanov Dynasty. This eventually included Alaska and Hawaii and extended all the way to California.

One thing that we can see just by looking around Siberia is that it seems to be more conservative in outlook than European Russia. For one thing, there are still statues of Lenin in city squares that are usually no longer seen in European Russia.

We will start our journey in the west, at the edge of European Russia, and proceed eastward across Siberia.

THERE ARE FOUR PRECEDING IMAGES WITH EACH STOP. ALL OF THESE IMAGES ARE FROM GOOGLE STREET VIEW 

The city of Ufa is actually on the European side of the Ural Mountains but it was one of the eastern outposts and settlements established during the time of Ivan the Terrible, who first proclaimed the Tsardom of Russia from territories that had been consolidated by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The following scenes are in the central area of Ufa.

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/@54.7351488,55.9587644,3a,75y,283.82h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMwQ4B2461mhnDPz6MOrpJGFOpTMhqYph9tQbRn!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMwQ4B2461mhnDPz6MOrpJGFOpTMhqYph9tQbRn%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya3.073558-ro-0-fo100!7i10000!8i5000

The name of Yekaterinburg, sometimes spelled as Ekaterinburg, means "The City of Catherine". This city is just on the Asian side of a gap in the Ural Mountains and so is sometimes considered as the "gateway to Siberia". The Catherine that the city is named for is Catherine I. She was the wife of Peter the Great, who founded St. Petersburg. Catherine I is not the same as the later Catherine the Great.

Had anyone thought about the irony that the city named for Catherine I is primarily known today as the place where the last Romanov emperor and his family were executed in 1917. But then Boris Yeltsin, who ended the Communism in Russia that had begun with the Bolsheviks who had executed the Romanovs and restored the Romanov flag as Russia's national flag, was from the Yekaterinburg area.

On maps and atlases from before the 1990s this city is named Sverdlovsk, which is what the Communists called it. During the following presidency of Boris Yeltsin, the name of Yekaterinburg was restored. The house where the Romanovs had been staying and were executed, the Ipatiev House, has since been demolished but the site is marked with the Cathedral on the Blood. The last two of the following four images are of this cathedral.

But this city is far more than just the place where the Romanovs were executed. Today it is the fourth-largest city in the country by population, and is known for it's prosperity and for being a good place to live. This is central Yekaterinburg.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yekaterinburg,+Sverdlovsk+Oblast,+Russia/@56.8353351,60.610515,3a,75y,221.1h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMgd8-ZplTXrZStr2j0KvPw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DMgd8-ZplTXrZStr2j0KvPw%26yaw%3D221.1041970355069!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x43c165eaa062db4b:0xd50243d7f7567f20!8m2!3d56.8430993!4d60.6454086!16zL20vMGhrcG4?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The city of Chelyabinsk was in the news in 2013 when a meteor entered the atmosphere and exploded above the city, doing quite a bit of damage. Siberia as a whole is known for the Tunguska Event, although this was not near Chelyabinsk. A large meteor or, as I believe, a small comet exploded in the atmosphere. The shock waves were felt across the world and the force of the explosion knocked over millions of trees over thousands of square kilometers in Siberia.

Theories are still being put forth today about this great explosion of 1908 in the sky above a remote part of Siberia. The lack of an impact crater seems to indicate that it was a comet, made primarily of ice that turned to water, rater than a meteor made of rock or metal. But some claim that there is a small lake that was not there before and that this is the impact crater.

At any rate, here is the city of Chelyabinsk.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Chelyabinsk,+Chelyabinsk+Oblast,+Russia/@55.166736,61.4019445,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sCIHM0ogKEICAgIDE7fConwE!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fgrass-cs%2FABsKjrwibsq6k9P4khE0PuLnRGeelDvMawyysKr9GKQhjh-wJEAb333EhUS9IgUBc1hEZncHQ_R5GvnxYLyovlfegLlRKvtpS80BNzB3lzwloLntX0QoXP8vklnlsmmdx3MJ0HLhyDfw%3Dw203-h143-k-no!7i4480!8i3164!4m6!3m5!1s0x43c592cb104a3a8d:0xef224a2a6d1711bf!8m2!3d55.1644419!4d61.4368432!16zL20vMDFrZzM5?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Tyumen is one of the cities that grew from outposts established in Siberia in the late Sixteenth Century.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tyumen,+Tyumen+Oblast,+Russia/@57.120578,65.5800802,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sCIHM0ogKEICAgICM-Ka7-gE!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fgrass-cs%2FABsKjrwwB3zNSeWitr6X5NpaZb5XDmFtXmWGkO5V7nNxCFRnVyAXzkvR2P2_CTgJiSQDtghvvEElp6timu5FRapKQ9V6mRlELNgw6kRi0htbalYDEA3zZM6_OKJvo94m6WUMyWLsr9AL%3Dw203-h270-k-no!7i3000!8i4000!4m6!3m5!1s0x43bbe15d51a3b8c7:0x9b137b6a2aa36793!8m2!3d57.1553394!4d65.5618637!16zL20vMDJmM19z?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Tobolsk, another Siberian city originating in the Sixteenth Century, is where the Romanov family was originally sent, for their own safety during the Russian Civil War, before being moved back westward to Yekaterinburg. The following scenes begin in the Tobolsk Kremlin. Remember that the best-known Russian kremlin is the one in Moscow, but a kremlin actually means a fortified citadel that is found in some other Russian cities as well.

https://www.google.com/maps/@58.1999795,68.2510578,3a,75y,86.83h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPSVC8jcHUXFLplGeaOi225U7PuVoEKFukEeqA-!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPSVC8jcHUXFLplGeaOi225U7PuVoEKFukEeqA-%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi23.887123-ya76.45351-ro24.537546-fo100!7i7200!8i3600

Omsk is not as old as some of the other Siberian cities, having been founded in the Eighteenth Century.

https://www.google.com/maps/@54.9840209,73.388351,3a,75y,140h,110t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sobxebt8_xPttqaqN3zSTvQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dobxebt8_xPttqaqN3zSTvQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D140%26pitch%3D-20%26thumbfov%3D100

Novosibirsk is a newer city, from the late Nineteenth Century, but is today the largest city in Siberia and the third largest city in Russia, after Moscow and St. Petersburg.

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.030126,82.920433,3a,75y,40h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPYnbR56MBCO0sFcJh_s_oZX9KiU_SKMmEjZRmm!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPYnbR56MBCO0sFcJh_s_oZX9KiU_SKMmEjZRmm%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya132.00002-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

The cities in Siberia that are further to the west, closer to European Russia, grew from outposts that were founded in the Sixteenth Century. As exploration of Siberia proceeded further eastward, other cities were founded in the following century. This is the city of Tomsk.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomsk,+Tomsk+Oblast,+Russia/@56.482751,84.9504207,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sCIHM0ogKEICAgICq2PqFRA!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fgrass-cs%2FABsKjrzE8Sd1w-kD_vvMbnBoPm-DLlHmVHzn6aMEheU5qZ3-fDlPGZdxUOEDrUJ0gOETmWyq8BVC5f-zajjnyYfJQNRLrmiC11hghw7sHAW92eYreCsE05u4QHTwAS86u1gVrFwEH1Y5%3Dw203-h114-k-no!7i4608!8i2592!4m6!3m5!1s0x432693b2b65d4c1b:0xcf0bf11d988ae72f!8m2!3d56.4884295!4d84.9480469!16zL20vMGgzcnk?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Krasnoyarsk is another city that first began in the Seventeenth Century.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Krasnoyarsk,+Krasnoyarsk+Krai,+Russia/@56.01099,92.84798,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sCIHM0ogKEICAgIDqpaidaQ!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fgrass-cs%2FABsKjrwJTcS4a8N6p_OZcxDIrE-TKXyYFlDm8GD6QrhKlSrIS-MQoDBHbUu0MY5OUyUHWYNC2bkBLIoXsuUPlQqldxK8hoY4q5XcXk08mvtH_PtAMH2t3bU_gogE9ycApF0dl1o29BTQ%3Dw203-h152-k-no!7i2048!8i1536!4m6!3m5!1s0x5cd7afc9a1ff37e3:0xd597e1468fd647ff!8m2!3d56.0152834!4d92.8932476!16zL20vMGpoYjQ?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Irkutsk originated in the mid-Seventeenth Century.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Irkutsk,+Irkutsk+Oblast,+Russia/@52.2856851,104.281555,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sCIHM0ogKEICAgIDEw_yqiAE!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fgrass-cs%2FABsKjrwPTYPytYGzl5OnL5o-K1kRwl1f4M02cDKmQ_LTpn6jqRjgvHy_QunQ4Y-KjQcpKhTWUiWYHI0e6r5T8yDe0vgn6AQA3XcJYk247pZdfbrro1f4nqOLZKuYP92nlApccYBPmkXnzQ%3Dw203-h135-k-no!7i2048!8i1365!4m6!3m5!1s0x5da83ad353e2f665:0x31d6cd1456d8e94e!8m2!3d52.2854834!4d104.2890222!16zL20vMGZwMnY?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Finally, we arrive on Russia's Pacific coast. This is the city of Vladivostok. It is not a very old city, only from the Nineteenth Century. But it is Russia's window on the Pacific Ocean and the Far East, and is possibly the most strategically-located city in the world. St. Petersburg, at the opposite end of Russia, is over 6500 km, or 4,000 miles, away.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.1234979,131.8779782,3a,75y,160h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipO-U5L8LeOrmfeje2i2ZPtV5baVrNKxR2qWucxU!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipO-U5L8LeOrmfeje2i2ZPtV5baVrNKxR2qWucxU%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya230-ro0-fo100!7i7076!8i3538

AI Image Of Donald Trump As Jesus

Many people are upset about an AI image this week supposedly showing Donald Trump as Jesus, or a Christ-like figure, although I don't think that was specifically stated. Donald Trump also expressed a negative opinion about the Pope. This came after Donald Trump's planned arch, which will resemble Napoleon's arch, and his White House ballroom, which will resemble the Palace of Versailles, were in the news.

Let's review what is happening.

We saw in the posting "The Intersection Theory Of History", November 2025, how Donald Trump is actually reenacting two, apparently contradictory, historical lines. These are the French Bourbon Dynasty but also that of Napoleon, which replaced it.

We saw "The Far-Reaching Legacy Of Napoleon", July 2025.

The following image is from the Wikipedia article "Coronation Of Napoleon". The Pope was holding Napoleon's crown. But, instead of being crowned by the Pope, Napoleon took the crown from him and put it on himself. According to one story he snatched the crown from the Pope. This put Napoleon above the Pope.

A church was being built in central Paris. Napoleon took over the church and turned it into a temple dedicated to the glory of his army. It is now known as La Madeleine, and has been turned back into a church. A great painting was done in the temple called "The History of Christianity". It features Napoleon as a prominent figure, with the Pope to his left. In the following image, from Google Street View, Napoleon is shown as a holy figure, in the red robe above the green dot.

Donald Trump is reenacting this.

Why Doesn't The Moon Have A Name?

"The moon" isn't a name. It is a word or a noun. A moon is a natural object that is in orbit around a planet. There are many other moons in the Solar System. Saying "the moon" is like saying "the city".

The reason is obviously that, until the invention of telescopes, it was not known that there are other moons. There was no pressing reason to differentiate the moon from any similar objects.

"The sun" was so-called before it was understood that it was a star but it now acts as a name to differentiate it from other stars. In the same way, "the earth" was so-called before it was understood that the earth was a planet, and only one of the planets. Now it serves as a name to differentiate it from the other planets. But the same cannot be said of "the moon".

Is it about time that the moon had a name? I wonder if Donald Trump could think of something.

Craters On The Moon

With the Artemis mission around the moon this week, let's review my view of it's craters.

An interesting question is why meteors traveling through space often fall into orbit around the earth but don't immediately impact it's surface. If it will be under the influence of the earth's gravitational field then why wouldn't it fall to the surface? It is because that would be creating energy out of nothing and that is something that can never be done. This simple fact actually explains a lot.

A natural object, made of rock or metal, passing through space is called a "meteor". After it impacts a planet or moon it is called a "meteorite". 

Meteors usually come from the Asteroid Belt. It is generally believed that the asteroids would have coalesced by gravity into a planet but the powerful gravity of Jupiter, the most massive of the planets, prevented them from coalescing. 

A higher position or a higher orbit is a higher energy position. An object ten meters above the ground can be seen to have more potential energy than one five meters above the ground because, if both objects are dropped, the one that was higher will impact the ground with greater force. Likewise a higher orbit has more energy than a lower one. Gravity operates by the Inverse Square Law so that if we give an object in orbit three times the orbital energy it will orbit at nine times the original altitude, but with only one-third the speed. 

What happens is that the orbit of Jupiter is further from the sun, and thus a higher-energy orbit, than the orbits of the asteroids. The mutual gravity between Jupiter and an asteroid gradually slows the asteroid, every time it passes Jupiter in it's orbit. This transfers orbital energy from the asteroid to Jupiter, causing the asteroid to fall into a lower orbit closer to the sun. Eventually the asteroid encounters the inner planets, and may collide with one of them or the moon. 

Here is the mystery. We can see that there has been countless meteorite Impacts on the moon and on Mercury, as evidenced by the number of craters, but much fewer on the earth and on Mars. Part of the explanation is erosion that can erase evidence of meteorite impacts over time. There is weather on earth and wind and dust on now-dry Mars. But that cannot fully explain why there are so many more meteorite impacts on the moon and Mercury than there is on earth and Mars. There is another explanation that I have noticed.

Venus is also an inner planet but I am leaving it out of this explanation because it is shrouded in dense cloud and we cannot see it's surface.

Now here is what we must remember, and it is simple. It is that energy can never be created out of nothing. 

When an object falls toward a planet it undergoes acceleration due to the planet's gravity. On earth the acceleration due to gravity of a falling object is 32 feet, or 9.8 meters, per second squared. For an object to fall into orbit around the earth it will have come from further away from the sun than the earth. When it is in orbit around the earth it is still also in orbit around the sun, since the earth itself is in orbit around the sun, the additional orbital energy from it's original higher orbit will go into it's orbit around the earth. The total orbital energy of the object will be that of it's orbit around the sun plus that of it's orbit around the earth.

But the fact that energy can never be created out of nothing determines whether the object will fall to earth as a meteorite or remain in orbit. If the object falls to earth it will be subject to the acceleration due to gravity of a falling object and will impact the ground with force. But there is no energy in gravity itself, it is just a force, and if the energy with which it would impact the earth exceeds it's original orbital energy around the sun, minus the orbital energy of the earth around the sun, then it would be creating energy out of nothing for it to impact the earth. Since this can never be done the object has to stay in orbit around the earth, rather than impacting the earth. 

This means that, the more massive a planet is, the more likely that a passing object will fall into orbit around it, rather than impacting it, to avoid the impossibility of creating energy out of nothing. Also the closer a planet is to the sun the less it's orbital energy and thus the more likely that a passing object will have sufficiently more orbital energy so that impacting the planet, after undergoing it's acceleration due to gravity, would not be creating energy out of nothing. So the less massive a planet is, or the closer to the sun it is, the more likely it is to be impacted by meteors. 

This explains why there are so many more meteorite impacts on the moon and Mercury than there are on earth and Mars. 

Mars is not really a massive planet. But it is the furthest of the inner planets from the sun, thus having the highest orbital energy per mass. It is also the closest inner planet to the asteroid belt. This means that an asteroid that was descending to a lower orbit around the sun, due to lost orbital energy, would have the least orbital energy difference with Mars, compared to the other inner planets. Thus the asteroid would have less chance to not have to create energy out of nothing, which is impossible, if it impacted Mars after undergoing it's acceleration due to gravity. 

This is why Mars does not have that many meteorite impacts and it's two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, are widely believed to have originated as asteroids that fell into orbit around the planet but have never impacted it, because to impact Mars would have required creating energy out of nothing. 

Since the moon is in orbit around the earth it is the same average distance as the earth from the sun. But the moon is much less massive than the earth, it's surface gravity is only 1 / 6 that of the earth. This means that approaching meteors require much less additional energy than the orbital energy of the moon, per mass, to be able to impact the moon without creating energy out of nothing. This is why the moon gets struck by meteorites much more than the earth, at least per area. 

Mercury is the planet that is closest to the sun, meaning that it has the least orbital energy of the planets. This is why it really gets hammered by meteorite impacts. It is also the smallest planet, if Pluto isn't included, although Mercury does have a high density because so much of it's interior is made of iron. Mercury was impacted with such force by one meteorite, the Caloris Impact, that the resulting shock wave affected the terrain on the diametrically opposite side of the planet.

The Space Age Calendar

Since we are back to sending humans far into space, why don't we have a calendar for the Space Age? Let me explain my calendar.

THE SPACE AGE CALENDAR

Have you ever thought that we could use a new calendar? The Gregorian Calendar, named for Pope Gregory, that we now use is from a medieval time when most people worked in agriculture. The idea of calendar reform is not new. The days do not fit evenly into a year and there has been the idea of "leap weeks" instead of an extra day in a "leap year", every four years.

I have a calendar too. My calendar is called the "Space Age Calendar". As the name implies it is intended to help with space exploration. The calendar is based on the earth's distance from the sun. 

The earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical, rather than circular. The point at which the earth is closest to the sun is known as perihelion, and the furthest point from the sun is aphelion.

Why on earth do we need months? Months were based on the orbit of the moon around the earth, which is 29 days and does not fit evenly into the year. This might have been useful in agriculture, to keep track of the best time to plant, but months are completely irrelevant today except as a convenient billing cycle.

In my calendar the days are simply numbered, from 1 to 365, with day 366 added every fourth year. We will still keep the weekdays. Today we live much more by the clock than by the calendar, and much more by the week than by the month. Months have been mostly irrelevant since the Industrial Revolution, except for setting holidays and religious observances by the lunar cycle.

The convenient monthly billing cycle can continue on multiples of 30. Day 30, Day 60, Day 90, etc. The date will be expressed with three digits following the year. Today will be 2024004

The solstices and equinoxes, when the day or night is longest and the other shortest and when the two are equal, will still be there. But today it really matters to very few people exactly when the seasons begin. It is only temperate latitudes that really have four seasons anyway.

If the year were to begin with either perihelion or aphelion the date, the number of the day, would tell us how far the earth was from the sun. There is a difference of about 3 million miles, or 5 million kilometers, between perihelion and aphelion. This distance makes a difference. For an example spring tides, where the gravitational pull of the sun and moon is coordinated, will be stronger at perihelion but weaker at aphelion. But neap tides, when the sun and moon are at right angles to each other, will be the opposite.

One issue with space travel is that there is no ready way to tell directions in space. There is no north, south, east or, west. We might refer to the northern or southern hemisphere of the moon or sun or one of the planets. But we are only going by earth's northern or southern hemisphere. This is less-than accurate because each planet has a different axis of rotation that is not parallel to earth's.

The earth rotates eastward. The moon revolves around the earth in the same direction, as does the earth around the sun. So we might say that the earth revolves eastward around the sun. But it is only eastward relative to the earth, there is no real "eastward" in space.

But using a line between the points of aphelion and perihelion, which remain fixed, gives us a meridian or baseline from which we can establish directions in space. Two lines perpendicular to it, both intersecting the original meridian at the center of the sun, would be all that we need to establish directions in space, just like on earth. We would easily find exactly where in space we were because the date would give us both the position and the distance from the sun. We just have to factor in that the earth does not move at a constant pace in it's orbit around the sun, it moves faster when it is closer to the sun.

I was thinking of beginning the year on January 4, because that would be closer to the present New Year. But aphelion occurs, just by chance, on America's Independence Day. What would Americans think of the year beginning on what is now the Fourth of July?

Satanic Stabbings In Manhattan

A man in Manhattan was attacking people with a machete while claiming to be "Lucifer", the name of Satan before he rebelled against God. Here is something that I have never seen pointed out. If you think the house at Amityville is spooky, just read this.

THE ACID KING OF LONG ISLAND 

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.

TRIFLING WITH THE DEVIL 

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. 

Satan is trying to outdo God. Jesus was sent into the world as the Savior by God. At some point, Satan will put forth his own savior. The Antichrist will be the greatest leader that the world has ever seen and will seem to have all of the answers to everything, at least for a while.

Satan can work miracles, although limited in scope and not as powerful as God, and the Antichrist will amaze the world with miracles. There will be an assassination attempt on him and he will amaze everyone by apparently coming back to life.

Orion

The Artemis spacecraft that went around the moon was named Orion. This constellation has been very important to human history. It is pronounced like "O-ryan", not like "onion".

Every autumn I remember when I first see the constellation Orion. It is a winter constellation and seeing it means that winter is on the way. Orion is first visible in the early morning. During winter it is visible in the evening. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, it is not part of Orion but is nearby. Orion is one of the most easily recognizable of the constellations, along with the Big Dipper and maybe Taurus and Casseopia.

Remember my theory of why the world-famous three Pyramids of Giza, which are now within Cairo, are arranged like the belt of Orion.

We saw the solution to what the Pyramids of Giza, at Cairo, are, and why they are arranged as they are. The three pyramids, the best-known of all of the Pyramids, are arranged in not quite a straight line. The arrangement matches that of the three stars of the belt of the constellation Orion, except that it is upside-down.

The ancient Egyptians believed in the "underworld" as a place that the soul passes through after death. If "seen" from below ground, the arrangement of the Giza Pyramids would exactly match that of the stars in the belt of Orion.

This makes it clear that the pyramids were meant to represent stars, if seen from the "underworld". The vertices of each pyramid represents the "points" that we see on stars. The pyramids were originally cased in white limestone, which would have shone brilliantly in the sun. Some of this original casing remains at the top of the middle pyramid, that of Khafre or Chephren.

Here is the posting with my explanation of those three pyramids, "The Underground Orion Correlation Theory". 

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-underground-orion-correlation-theory.html?m=0