Since we have people from all over the world who seem to drop by here from time to time, I’m not taking any chances. And we don’t want you to take any chances. If you’re going to drink, don’t drive. Not even around the parking lot. You see, while we have never met we have grown close in a way only the internet allows and we’d miss you ever so much, as Shirley Temple used to say, were you to end up dead or something like that.

Also you should keep in mind that, outside of some very weird TV shows and movies, dead people don’t get laid. That alone should give you a reason to live. If that doesn’t work, then stick around long enough to buy me a drink. I may as well get something out of you freeloading around here.

Happy New Year!

in brown: phonetical transcription

AFRIKAANS	gelukkige nuwejaar / voorspoedige nuwejaar
AKPOSSO	ilufio ètussé
ALBANIAN	Gëzuar vitin e ri
ALSATIAN	e glëckliches nëies / güets nëies johr
ARABIC	عام سعيد (aam saiid) / sana saiida
ARMENIAN	shnorhavor nor tari
ATIKAMEKW	amokitanone
AZERI	yeni iliniz mübarək
BAMBARA	aw ni san’kura / bonne année
BASAA	mbuee
BASQUE	urte berri on
BELARUSIAN	З новым годам (Z novym hodam)
BENGALI	subho nababarsho
BERBER	asgwas amegas / aseggas ighudan
BETI	mbembe mbu
BHOJPURI	nauka sal mubarak hoe
BOBO	bonne année
BOSNIAN	sretna nova godina
BRETON	bloavezh mat / bloavez mad
BULGARIAN	честита нова година (chestita nova godina)
BURMESE	hnit thit ku mingalar pa
CANTONESE	sun lin fi lok / kung hé fat tsoi
CATALAN	bon any nou
CHINESE (MANDARIN)	新年快乐 (xin nian kuai le) / 新年好 (xin nian hao)
CORNISH	bledhen nowedh da
CORSICAN	pace è salute
CROATIAN	sretna nova godina
CZECH	šťastný nový rok
DANISH	godt nytår
DARI	sale naw tabrik
DUALA	mbu mwa bwam
DUTCH	gelukkig nieuwjaar
ENGLISH	happy new year
ESPERANTO	feliĉan novan jaron
ESTONIAN	head uut aastat
EWE	eƒé bé dzogbenyui nami
EWONDO	mbembe mbu
FANG	bamba mbou
FAROESE	gott nýggjár
FILIPINO	manigong bagong taon
FINNISH	onnellista uutta vuotta
FLEMISH	gelukkig nieuwjaar
FON	coudo we yoyo
FRENCH	bonne année
FRISIAN	lokkich neijier
FRIULAN	bon an
FULA	dioul mo wouri
GALICIAN	feliz ano novo
GEORGIAN	გილოცავთ ახალ წელს (gilocavt akhal tsels)
GERMAN	Frohes neues Jahr / prosit Neujahr
GREEK	Καλή Χρονιά (kali chronia / kali xronia) / Ευτυχισμένος ο Καινούριος Χρόνος (eutichismenos o kainourgios chronos)
GUJARATI	sal mubarak / nootan varshabhinandan
GUARANÍ	rogüerohory año nuévo-re
HAITIAN CREOLE	bònn ané
HAOUSSA	barka da sabuwar shekara
HAWAIIAN	hauoli makahiki hou
HEBREW	שנה טובה (shana tova)
HERERO	ombura ombe ombua
HINDI	nav varsh ki subhkamna
HMONG	nyob zoo xyoo tshiab
HUNGARIAN	boldog új évet
ICELANDIC	gleðilegt nýtt ár
IGBO	obi anuri nke afor ohuru
INDONESIAN	selamat tahun baru
INUKTITUT (NUNAVIMMIUTITUT)	ᐅᑭᐅᒥ ᓄᑖᒥ ᖁᕕᐊᓱᒋᑦ (ukiumi nutaami quviasugit) – to 1 person ᐅᑭᐅᒥ ᓄᑖᒥ ᖁᕕᐊᓱᒋᑦᓯ (ukiumi nutaami quviasugitsi) – to several persons
IRISH GAELIC	ath bhliain faoi mhaise
ITALIAN	felice anno nuovo / buon anno
JAVANESE	sugeng warsa enggal
JAPANESE	あけまして　おめでとう　ございます (akemashite omedetô gozaimasu)
KABYLIAN	aseggas ameggaz
KANNADA	ಹೊಸ ವರ್ಷದ ಹಾರ್ಧಿಕ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳು (hosa varshada hardika shubhashayagalu)
KASHMIRI	nav reh mubarakh
KAZAKH	zhana zhiliniz kutti bolsin
KHMER	sur sdei chhnam thmei
KIEMBU	ngethi cya mwaka mweru
KINYARWANDA	umwaka mwiza
KIRUNDI	umwaka mwiza
KYRGYZ	ЖАӉЫ ЖЫЛЫӉЫЗДАР МЕНЕН (zhany zhylynyzdar menen)
KOREAN	새해 복 많이 받으세요 (seh heh bok mani bat uh seyo)
KURDE	sala we ya nû pîroz be
KWANGALI	mvhura zompe zongwa
LAO	sabai di pi mai
LATIN	felix sit annus novus
LATVIAN	laimīgu Jauno gadu
LIGURIAN	bón ànno nêuvo
LINGALA	bonana / mbúla ya sika elámu na tombelí yɔ̌
LITHUANIAN	laimingų Naujųjų Metų
LOW SAXON	gelükkig nyjaar
LUGANDA	omwaka omulungi
LUXEMBOURGEOIS	e gudd neit Joër
MACEDONIAN	Среќна Нова Година (srekna nova godina)
MALAGASY	arahaba tratry ny taona
MALAY	selamat tahun baru
MALAYALAM	nava varsha ashamshagal
MALTESE	is-sena t-tajba
MANGAREVAN	kia porotu te ano ou
MAORI	kia hari te tau hou
MARATHI	navin varshaachya hardik shubbheccha
MARQUISIAN	kaoha nui tenei ehua hou
MOHAWK	ose:rase
MONGOLIAN	Шинэ жилийн баярын мэнд хvргэе (shine jiliin bayariin mend hurgeye)
MORÉ	wênd na kô-d yuum-songo
NDEBELE	umyaka omucha omuhle
NEPALI	naya barsha ko subhakamana
NGOMBALE	ngeu’ shwi pong mbeo paghe
NORMAN	boune anna / jostouse anna
NORWEGIAN	godt nyttår
OCCITAN	bon annada
ORIYA	subha nababarsa / naba barsara hardika abhinandan
OURDOU	naya sar Mubarak
PALAUAN	ungil beches er rak
PAPIAMENTU	bon anja / felis anja nobo
PASHTO	nawe kaalmo mobarak sha
PERSIAN	سال نو مبارک (sâle no mobârak)
POLISH	szczęśliwego nowego roku
PORTUGUESE	feliz ano novo
PUNJABI	ਨਵੇਂ ਸਾਲ ਦੀਆਂ ਵਧਾਈਆਂ (nave saal deeyan vadhaiyaan)
ROMANCHE	bun di bun onn
ROMANI	baxtalo nevo bersh
ROMANIAN	un an nou fericit / la mulţi ani
RUSSIAN	С Новым Годом (S novim godom)
SAMOAN	ia manuia le tausaga fou
SAMI	buorre ådåjahke
SANGO	nzoni fini ngou
SARDINIAN	bonu annu nou
SCOTTISH GAELIC	bliadhna mhath ur
SERBIAN	Срећна Нова година (Srećna Nova godina)
SHIMAORE	mwaha mwema
SHONA	goredzva rakanaka
SINDHI	nain saal joon wadhayoon
SINHALESE	ශුභ අළුත් අවුරුද්දක් වේවා (shubha aluth awuruddak weiwa)
SIOUX LAKOTA	omaka t’etcha kin washte kte ni / omaka tetcha oi’yokipi
SLOVAK	šťastný nový rok
SLOVENIAN	srečno novo leto
SOBOTA	dobir leto
SOMALI	sanad wanagsan
SPANISH	feliz año nuevo
SRANAN	wan bun nyun yari
SWAHILI	mwaka mzuri / heri ya mwaka mpya
SWEDISH	gott nytt år
SWISS-GERMAN	es guets Nöis
TAGALOG	manigong bagong taon
TAHITIAN	ia orana i te matahiti api
TAMAZIGHT	assugas amegaz
TAMIL	இனிய புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள் (iniya puthandu nal Vazhthukkal)
TATAR	yaña yıl belän
TELUGU	నూతన సంవత్శర శుభాకాంక్షలు (nuthana samvathsara subhakankshalu)
THAI	สวัสดีปีใหม่ (sawatdii pimaï)
TIBETAN	tashi delek / losar tashi delek
TIGRE	sanat farah wa khare
TSHILUBA	tshidimu tshilenga
TSWANA	itumelele ngwaga o mosha
TULU	posa varshada shubashaya
TURKISH	yeni yılınız kutlu olsun
TWENTS	gluk in’n tuk
UDMURT	Vyľ Aren
UKRAINIAN	Щасливого Нового Року / З Новим роком (z novym rokom)
URDU	naya sal mubarak
UZBEK	yangi yilingiz qutlug’ bo’lsin
VIETNAMESE	Chúc Mừng Nǎm Mới / Cung Chúc Tân Niên / Cung Chúc Tân Xuân
WALOON	ene boune anéye, ene boune sintéye
WALOON (“betchfessîs” spelling)	bone annéye / bone annéye èt bone santéye
WELSH	blwyddyn newydd dda
WEST INDIAN CREOLE	bon lanné
WOLOF	dewenati
XHOSA	nyak’omtsha
YIDDISH	אַ גוט יאָר (a gut yohr / a guit your / a guit youai)
YORUBA	eku odun / eku odun tun tun / eku iyedun
ZERMA	barka’n da djiri tagio
ZULU	unyaka omusha omuhle

Happy New Year, Love Pesky (NSFW)

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
contact Bill McCormick
Your Ad Can Be Here Now!

It’s very weird getting asked if I can “reprint” something that only exists digitally. But, what the foschnizzle, it’s Christmas so here you go.

****************************

I received a lovely email yesterday from a regular reader. She said some very nice things about me and life in general and then got to the point. The point was that, as informative as this week’s articles have been about the holidays, I was “depressing the (expletive deleted) out of (her).” I guess I can see that. The history of Christmas is one of political compromise, violence and drunken debauchery. Not exactly the first thoughts that spring to mind when you think about ways to celebrate the birth of the Son of God. More likely a way to celebrate a frat party in honor of Biff’s trust fund. But it is what it is. Denying history doesn’t make it suddenly disappear, despite what you may hear from some recent political pundits. Nevertheless, she’s right. There are many aspects of the holiday that are cause for smiles. Honest ones too, not just the rueful ones I usually inspire.

We’ll start with some useless trivia.

Where did the Candy Cane come from? In a small Indiana town, there was a candymaker who wanted to spread the name of Jesus around the world. He invented the Christmas Candy Cane, incorporating symbols for the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ. He began with a stick of pure white, hard candy to symbolize the Virgin Birth. The candymaker formed the stick into a “J” to represent the name of Jesus. It can also represent the staff of the “Good Shepherd.” He thought the candy was too plain so he stained it with a red stripe to symbolize the blood shed by Christ on the cross.

Christmas Games – Weird Ones
Shoe the Wild Mare
Shoeing the Wild Mare is a traditional Christmas game that goes back to at least the early 17th century.

Get a narrow(a few inches wide), strong wooden beam and suspend it from the roof with two even length ropes. The beam is the ‘mare’ of the title and should be level yet high enough above the floor so that a player’s feet are off-ground. A player ‘the farrier’ then sits on the ‘mare’ in the centre, a leg either side. This player has a hammer and has to give the underside of the beam “four time eight blows” at a designated spot. If he falls off, it is someone else’s turn.

Much hilarity, and the odd broken shoulder ensues. (Odd broken shoulders????)

Snapdragons
Apparently this is the best game ever to play on Christmas Eve. Make sure you have the fire department on speed dial though.

Very popular from the 16th to the 19th centuries, Snapdragons (or Flapdragons) has explicably declined in popularity.

Gather everyone around the dining room table, place a large flat dish in the centre. In the dish scatter a good handful of raisins then pour on top a layer of brandy or cognac. Set fire to the brandy and dim the lights. Players take it in turns to pluck a raisin out of the burning liquid and eat it quickly down. For a more competitive edge to the game use larger dried fruit such as apricots, one of which has a lucky sixpence stuffed inside.

Equipment needed: plate, matches, raisins, brandy, address of nearest accident and emergency department

I have actually played Snapdragons. It was how I learned to use saliva to quickly douse my tongue. Oddly enough, and this will be a blog for another day, that knowledge has proved useful.

Here’s some other useless trivia for you. In case Christmas isn’t violent enough for you there’s another game, called “Hot Cockles” which can make your week. One person gets blindfolded and then players give a blow to the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person who gave the blow.

Whee!

Okay, let’s move on to some fun facts about Christmas trees.

Which actually had nothing to do with Christmas for centuries.

• The use of evergreen trees to celebrate the winter season occurred before the birth of Christ.
• The first decorated Christmas was in Riga, Latvia in 1510.
• The first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531.
• Nineteenth century Americans cut their trees in nearby forests.
• Christmas trees have been sold commercially in the United states since about 1850. Until fairly recently, all Christmas trees came from the forest. (ED: Not from a parking lot?)
• The first Christmas tree retail lot in the United States was started in 1851 in New York by Mark Carr.
• In 1900, large stores started to erect big illuminated Christmas trees.
• In 1856 Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, was the first President to place a Christmas tree in the White House.
• President Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923.
• Teddy Roosevelt banned the Christmas tree from the White House for environmental reasons.
• In 1984, the National Christmas was lit on December 13th with temperatures in the 70’s, making it one of the warmest tree lightings in history.
• Between 1887-1933 a fishing schooner called the “Christmas Ship” would tie up at the Clark Street bridge and sell spruce trees from Michigan to Chicagoans.

My grandmother used to talk about that ship. She said it was so laden with pine trees that you could smell it from blocks away.

Also, just so you know, all of Santa’s reindeer are chicks.

Anyway, here are ten meaningless facts that you’ll use to impress your friends at holiday parties.

ONE
What percentage of mall Santa applicants were discovered to have criminal backgrounds by Pre-employ.com?
7%

Approximate amount generated by photographs with Santa in shopping malls in the USA in dollars:
$2,255,750,000

TWO
How many houses must Santa visit on Christmas?
842,000,000

How fast must he travel to visit all those homes?
4,796,250 Mph

THREE
Percentage of Americans who believe Santa in the off-season drives a sports car:
4%

drives an SUV:
25%

FOUR
How many presents would you receive if you were to get every present in “The 12 Days of Christmas”?
364

How much would all those gifts cost? (according to PNC Financial Services)
$18348.87

FIVE
Percentage of Americans who finish off their Christmas Shopping on Christmas Eve:
20

SIX
Percentage of pet owners who have their dog or cat pose and photographed with Santa Claus:
27

SEVEN
Percentage of Americans who re-gift:
28

EIGHT
Which type of Christmas tree is displayed more during the holiday season, artificial or real?
Artificial trees are the most popular with 40,694,463 on display in comparison to real trees at 34,335,809

NINE
How many Barbie dolls are sold every minute around the world?
180

TEN
How much trash is generated annually from the gift wrap and shopping bags:
4,000,000 Tons

So, burning question of the day, why does Santa wear red? Well, it’s a Catholic thing. You see, Santa is based, in part, on the life of St. Nicholas and he was the bishop of Smyrna, a spot in modern day Turkey. Bishops wore, and still wear, red capes. Then red was the way Norman Rockwell saw it, and red was the color Coca-Cola wanted when it pretty much created the modern image of Santa in 1931. So, Santa wears red.

Got it?

Cool.

Also, he is, depending on where you’re at at the moment, the patron saint of banking, pawnbroking, pirating, butchery, sailing, thievery, orphans, royalty, and New York City, thus making him the most popular, non-biblical, saint in history. Saint Valentine is a distant second.

Some other stuff that will make our reader feel a little better about the holiday. Contrary to popular belief, suicide rates during the Christmas holiday are low. The highest rates are during the spring.

One reason may be that Christmas has better music. It is estimated that the single “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin is the best selling single of all time, with over 100 million sales worldwide and that 50 million of those sales were of the Bing Crosby version.

Bing’s daughter starred in Star Trek and had sex with an android in one episode.

That has nothing to do with the topic at hand, I just thought I’d share.

I will end this blog with a dinner prayer by cartoonist Berke Breathed.

“Dear Lord, I’ve been asked, nay commanded, to thank thee for the Christmas turkey before us — a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird — a social being capable of actual affection, nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it’s dead and we’re gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family.”

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
contact Bill McCormick
Your Ad Can Be Here Now!

If you’re like me, and I’m guessing you are since you’re reading this, you like to wake up in the morning and Google “naked cosplay” or “nude justice league” and so on. And because the internet is a thing you will be entertained for hours. In fact, if you simply add the word “sexy” to any search you will be entertained. Don’t believe me? Try “sexy baseball.” The point is that we all have our fantasies. And that’s fine. Just because your mom read 50 Shades of Grey doesn’t mean she wants to wrap herself in latex, get chained to a bed and be spanked. Trust me on that. But a rich fantasy life denotes a healthy mind. That would be a good thing for those of you who are new to the human race. A mind that explores and embraces new ideas is a mind that will never grow old or bored. And Hollywood has noticed that. While they’ll never make the Supergirl/Powergirl lesbian porno fans have been clamoring for, they have gone “all in” on the fantasy fulfillment end. Specifically, the growing need for movie audiences to escape into universes larger and more interesting than their own has been duly noted and is the driving force in cinema these days.

You clicked every link didn’t you? That’s okay. That’s what they’re there for.

Anyway, when I said Hollywood went all in I meant it. Culled from numerous sources is the list below. It is every superhero movie I could find that is in development or slated to be so at a definitive time with one exception that is duly noted. There are quite a few more in the advanced rumor stage but I couldn’t get anything on them so I’m just going with this for now.

2015
Feb. 13, 2015: “Kingsman: The Secret Service” (Fox)
May 1, 2015: “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (Marvel Studios)
July 17, 2015: “Ant-Man” (Marvel Studios)
Aug. 7, 2015: “The Fantastic Four” (Fox)
2015 undated: “Popeye” (Sony)

2016
Feb. 12, 2016: “Deadpool” (Fox)
March 25, 2016: “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (Warner Bros.)
May 6, 2016: “Captain America: Civil War” (Marvel Studios)
May 27, 2016: “X-Men: Apocalypse” (Fox)
June 3, 2016: “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2” (Paramount)
Aug. 5, 2016: “Suicide Squad” (Warner Bros.)
Nov. 4, 2016: “Doctor Strange” (Marvel Studios)
Nov. 6, 2016: “The Peanuts Movie” (Fox)
Nov. 11, 2016: “Sinister Six” (Sony)

2017
March 3, 2017: Untitled “The Wolverine” sequel (Fox)
May 5, 2017: “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” (Marvel Studios)
June 23, 2017: “Wonder Woman” (Warner Bros.)
July 14, 2017: “The Fantastic Four 2” (Fox)
July 28, 2017: “Thor: Ragnarok” (Marvel Studios)
Nov. 3, 2017: “Black Panther” (Marvel Studios)
Nov. 17, 2017: “Justice League Part One” (Warner Bros.)
2017 undated: “The LEGO Batman Movie” (Warner Bros.)
2017 undated: Untitled female Spider-Man spin-off (Sony)
2017 undated: Venom: Carnage Spider-Man spin-off (Sony) (this one may be defunct)

2018
March 23, 2018: “The Flash” (Warner Bros.)
May 4, 2018: “Avengers: Infinity War Part 1” (Marvel Studios)
July 6, 2018: “Captain Marvel” (Marvel Studios)
July 27, 2018: “Aquaman” (Warner Bros.)
Nov. 2, 2018: “Inhumans” (Marvel Studios)
2018 undated: “Amazing Spider-Man 3” (Sony)

2019
April 5, 2019: “Shazam” (Warner Bros.)
May 3, 2019: “Avengers: Infinity War Part 2” (Marvel Studios)
June 14, 2019: “Justice League Part Two” (Warner Bros.)

2020
April 3, 2020: “Cyborg” (Warner Bros.)
June 19, 2020: “Green Lantern” (Warner Bros.)

Add in the fact that both DC & Marvel have invested heavily into TV shows so that they can showcase lesser known characters and develop them as real people, as it were, and you have all the fantasies you can shake your stick at. So go ahead and fantasize. Even try a few things out in real life.

Just don’t jump off a building thinking you can fly and everything will work out fine.

The Constellations “Afterparty” uncensored music video from Video Rahim on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
contact Bill McCormick
Your Ad Can Be Here Now!

I loved Halloween as a kid and have kept right on loving it as the years have gone by. Once, in a pinch for a last minute costume, I wore a black body suit with some white tape pieces placed in even rows and a couple of toy cars attached using Christmas ornament hangers. That’s right, I went as a parking lot. Another year, since I happened to be at a nudist colony, I went as a pull toy. That proved popular and I’ll just leave the rest to your imagination. That being said, Halloween has become many things to many people. From Trick or Treating for Unicef to Tricks and Treat there are many variations. The latter is when kids have to tell you a joke to get candy. It was implemented to stop the violence of Devil’s Night a/k/a Mischief Night, etc. It’s been very successful in Des Moines and St. Louis. Not so much so in Detroit where Devil’s Night is treated as some sort of Constitutional right.

But most people, when asked, tend to think of it as a relatively young holiday. It’s far from it. The nice folks at History.com have done a great job of piecing the whole thing together.

Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the winter season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats.

ANCIENT ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA
Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland’s potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated. Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats. A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday.

TODAY’S HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS
The American Halloween tradition of “trick-or-treating” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as “going a-souling” was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

HALLOWEEN SUPERSTITIONS
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world. Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday—with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces. Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we’re asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the good will of the very same “spirits” whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly.

Halloween around the world brings us everything from the custom of hiding knives in Germany (to keep the dead from injuring themselves), to leaving out food with all the lights turned on bright in Austria (to help the dead see and grab a snack. They really care for the dead in this part of the world), to staring into a dark mirror in the UK and parts of the US (turn off the lights, look into a mirror and see your future spouse. If you see a skull you gonna DIE!!!!), to the fortune telling Barmbrack cake in Ireland to the fortune telling apple peels in Scotland (lots of fortune telling in that area), to Dios de la Muerte in Mexico where they invite their dead ancestors home for a snack and some tequila. That holiday concludes with a family picnic on the 3rd day at a graveyard.

So whether you’re dressing up as a Sexy Ebola Nurse (God help us) or a parking lot, have a safe and Happy Halloween.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
contact Bill McCormick
Your Ad Can Be Here Now!

I have been a busy little Billy recently. That whole job thing has been taking up a lot of my time. Which is a good thing. It means I’ve hitched my wagon to a growing concern that has room for advancement. Never a bad realization. That said, the glorious world of World News Center podcasts on the Big Wake Up Call have continued apace. That means that, for the first time in this blog’s illustrious history, we’ve discussed stuff on the radio that wasn’t on the site. So, today, I’m going to fix that. Let’s start with the easy stuff. On September 19th, against the advice of all rational people, I turned 53. I also was able to note that I’m 170 lbs lighter than I was on Valentine’s Day 2013. Since that was accomplished under a doctor’s care you need not worry about my health. I mean I did have the flu last week but that’s about it.

So let’s get this party started. Supergirl is coming to TV.

CBS has given a series commitment to Warner Bros. TV’s Supergirl, EW has learned.

Based on the DC Comics character, the drama tells the story of Kara Zor-El, who was born on the planet Krypton, but escaped amid its destruction years ago. Since arriving on Earth, she’s been hiding the powers she shares with her famous cousin Superman. But now, at age 24, she decides to embrace her superhuman abilities and be the hero she was always meant to be.

Arrow and Flash executive producer Greg Berlanti and New Normal’s Ali Adler will write and executive-produce with Sarah Schechter.

For those of you who aren’t professional TV Producers, a series commitment is almost unheard of. It means there will be 13 episodes created no matter what. Unheard of, yes, but not insane. They know that, last March, a guy named Vincent Tran created a bit of fan fiction called Girl Of Steel and it won him awards, critical acclaim and free admission to every Comicon in the country. They also know they have a winning production team and, more importantly, that the comic book industry is no longer the sausage fest it used to be. There is a real market for strong, female, characters. Rumors say that Powergirl will also appear. Whether it’s the “lesbian lover” version or the “evil clone” seems to have not been decided. My guess is evil clone. CBS is still a family oriented station and Americans are cool with killing, not so much the kissing stuff.

for those of you who’ve been waiting for an invisibility cloak or stuff that see’s through brick, keep reading.

Janet Fang, from I Fucking Love Science, reports that researchers are closer now than ever before to making a cloak just like the one Harry Potter wore.

The idea of an invisibility cloak depends on manipulating light in the way electronic circuits manipulate the flow of electrons. When electromagnetic waves (such as light) hit an object like metal or wood, they scatter; that’s how we see the object. But say there’s an artificial material that cloaks the object—bending an incoming wave around it without scattering it. Then we wouldn’t be able to see the object.

We manipulate light all the time: magnifying glasses focus light down to a spot while mirrors reflect light and change its direction. But metamaterials can do something more sophisticated. “They’re able to bend light, to scatter it, to manipulate it in unusual ways,” Tiffany Walsh of Deakin University explains.

Simply put, if the light isn’t bouncing off your glorious bod, no one will know it’s there. Whether or not invisible people are a good thing or not I’ll leave for another day.

But as long as we’re bending light, let’s take a look at what Lisa Winter found.

A device that sees through objects.

“This is the first device that we know of that can do three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking, which works for transmitting rays in the visible spectrum,” Choi added.

The secret is not focusing the light straight through the center of the lenses. “This cloak bends light and sends it through the center of the device, so the on-axis region cannot be blocked or cloaked,” explained Choi.

If larger lenses are used, the device could conceal larger things, or see around large objects. Howell explained that this setup, which allows objects to be concealed when viewed from a span of 15 angles, could also be used to allow semi-truck drivers to see around their blind spots. As truck drivers are involved in over half a million accidents each year, this has incredible potential for real world integration.

Best of all, the researchers have included directions to make your own cloaking lenses here:

Image credit: University of Rochester

-Purchase 2 sets of 2 lenses with different focal lengths f1 and f2 (4 lenses total, 2 with f1 focal length, and 2 with f2 focal length)

-Separate the first 2 lenses by the sum of their focal lengths (So f1 lens is the first lens, f2 is the 2nd lens, and they are separated by t1= f1+ f2).

-Do the same in Step 2 for the other two lenses.

-Separate the two sets by t2=2 f2 (f1+ f2) / (f1 — f2) apart, so that the two f2 lenses are t2 apart.

NOTES:

Achromatic lenses provide best image quality.

Fresnel lenses can be used to reduce the total length (2t1+t2)

Smaller total length should reduce edge effects and increase the range of angles.

Okay, now you’ve got your invisibility cloak and you can see through objects. What’s next?

How about a nice jaunt around the solar system?

Those fun kids down at NASA have built a new space vehicle that can go anywhere in the solar system. And, just because they’re whimsical like this, they also built the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.

Orion’s first flight test, called Exploration Flight Test-1, will launch this year atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37. This test will evaluate launch and high speed re-entry systems such as avionics, attitude control, parachutes and the heat shield.

In the future, Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. More powerful than any rocket ever built, SLS will be capable of sending humans to deep space destinations such as an asteroid and eventually Mars. Exploration Mission-1, scheduled for 2017, will be the first mission to integrate Orion and the Space Launch System.

Say hi to this bad boy.

You’ll note the solar panels. Once in space it can power itself, and all its components, with nothing but sunlight. As envisioned it could travel between the planets indefinitely and just load and unload astronauts.

So, yes kids, this is a thing.

A very very cool thing.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
contact Bill McCormick
Your Ad Can Be Here Now!

I’ve written before about the plight of bees. They’re dying off by the millions and then some of them come back from the dead. Yes, Virginia, there are zom-bees. And I’m sure you’ve heard the old trope that if the bees disappear then all life will perish in four years. Sadly, unlike other old tropes, that one’s true. Without bees pollinating the flowers that grow plants our little planet will go fallow. With no food for anyone to eat we’ll all die. It’s really that simple. As Safa Motesharrei, of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, pointed out in March of this year, at our current rate of environmental destruction we only have a few decades left before we cross the tipping point. That was before science noticed that those gaping holes erupting all over the arctic circle are methane factories of doom that could shorten that timeline to something around 2035 or so. Most of you reading this will long enough to die horrible deaths.

I’m just a font of fun, aren’t I?

The thing is that it’s all correctable and could reap huge benefits for all of us if we got our heads out of our asses …. well, if the anti-vaccers and science deniers got their heads out of their asses. My head has no brown rim. In fact it even smells good too.

I don’t want this to go on forever or go off the rails so I’ll focus on one simple thing. Scientists have known for millenia that honey has medicinal effects that cause healing. It’s been used on open wounds since before the second dynasty of Egypt.

And, guess what? It helps you heal.

Now, before you run out and buy gallons of that stuff that comes in the cute bottles at your local Wal-Mart, be advised that there are some restrictions.

Lisa Winter, over at I Fucking Love Science, has the whole story.

With antibiotic resistance on the rise, alternative methods for fighting pathogens are in high demand, even if it means going back to basics. Honey has been used to treat wounds for thousands of years, long before microorganisms had been discovered. Recently, researchers have identified 13 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) found within raw honey from different bee species that have effectively treated some of the most antimicrobial-resistant pathogens afflicting humans today. The research was led by Tobias Olofsson of Lund University and the paper was published in the International Wound Journal.

Honey that is sold commercially has typically been exposed to heat, pasteurization, and processing in order to kill any yeast and prevent fermentation. While this treatment that makes the honey safer and more shelf-stable, it also gets rid of the honey’s benefits, including antimicrobial and antihistamine properties. Raw, unrefined honey that has the most benefits will come directly from beekeepers, though some specialty shops may have it available.

Olofsson’s team tested raw honey’s mettle against antimicrobial-resistant pathogens including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE). They discovered that while the 13 LAB work individually, they also produced additional antibacterial compounds when combined. The LAB mixture was able to curb all 14 bacterial strains used in the study.

In addition to killing pathogens in the lab, the team also used the LAB mixture on horses who had experienced chronic wounds that have not responded to conventional treatments. All ten horses who received the mixture topically experienced wound healing.

“Antibiotics are mostly one active substance, effective against only a narrow spectrum of bacteria,” commented Olofsson in a statement. “When used alive, these 13 lactic acid bacteria produce the right kind of antimicrobial compounds as needed, depending on the threat. It seems to have worked well for millions of years of protecting bees’ health and honey against other harmful microorganisms. However, since store-bought honey doesn’t contain the living lactic acid bacteria, many of its unique properties have been lost in recent times.”

The researchers will continue to study raw honey, in hopes of identifying all of the possible clinical uses for the antibacterial properties. Fresh honey can be found pretty much all over the world, which would be a fantastic option for those living in developed or remote areas where healthcare is minimally available. Additionally, this approach could potentially be integrated into medical facilities as a treatment for those facing drug-resistant pathogens.

So there you have it. To make honey more profitable we have removed all the beneficial effects from it. Well, except for the easily digestible sugars. So, go ahead and sweeten your tea accordingly. Your pancreas will thank you.

But aside from that the crap you buy at Whole Foods, or Wal-Mart, is essentially worthless.

So here’s the deal. If we are ever to combat our growing problems with antibiotics and wean people off of the man-made alternatives we need to save the bees.

That means no transgenic seeds (bye Monsanto!), no pesticides that leak into the soil, no plants that are designed to kill insects.

Just FYI, for those of you new to reality, bees are insects too.

Bee Eyes – Double Sunrise (Official) from BEE EYES on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
contact Bill McCormick
Your Ad Can Be Here Now!

There have been so many movies and books about time travel you could be forgiven for thinking it was a real thing. It’s not, in case you slept through science class. There are a lot of reasons it’s not, too. The energy required would be one draw back. Simply put you’d need to harness the sun just to even begin thinking about it. After all, you’re planning on bending all dimensional space/time to your will. That’s not easy. And, then, even if you did it, you’d still have to deal wit the grandfather paradox. Basically, what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather? Are you then not born? That would seem logical.

Lee Billings at Scientific American says, not so fast. Some very smart people have given the idea some serious thought and they seem to have a working model or two that might allow it to happen.

On June 28, 2009, the world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking threw a party at the University of Cambridge, complete with balloons, hors d’oeuvres and iced champagne. Everyone was invited but no one showed up. Hawking had expected as much, because he only sent out invitations after his party had concluded. It was, he said, “a welcome reception for future time travelers,” a tongue-in-cheek experiment to reinforce his 1992 conjecture that travel into the past is effectively impossible.

But Hawking may be on the wrong side of history. Recent experiments offer tentative support for time travel’s feasibility—at least from a mathematical perspective. The study cuts to the core of our understanding of the universe, and the resolution of the possibility of time travel, far from being a topic worthy only of science fiction, would have profound implications for fundamental physics as well as for practical applications such as quantum cryptography and computing.

Closed timelike curves
The source of time travel speculation lies in the fact that our best physical theories seem to contain no prohibitions on traveling backward through time. The feat should be possible based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of spacetime by energy and matter. An extremely powerful gravitational field, such as that produced by a spinning black hole, could in principle profoundly warp the fabric of existence so that spacetime bends back on itself. This would create a “closed timelike curve,” or CTC, a loop that could be traversed to travel back in time.

Hawking and many other physicists find CTCs abhorrent, because any macroscopic object traveling through one would inevitably create paradoxes where cause and effect break down. In a model proposed by the theorist David Deutsch in 1991, however, the paradoxes created by CTCs could be avoided at the quantum scale because of the behavior of fundamental particles, which follow only the fuzzy rules of probability rather than strict determinism. “It’s intriguing that you’ve got general relativity predicting these paradoxes, but then you consider them in quantum mechanical terms and the paradoxes go away,” says University of Queensland physicist Tim Ralph. “It makes you wonder whether this is important in terms of formulating a theory that unifies general relativity with quantum mechanics.”

Experimenting with a curve
Recently Ralph and his PhD student Martin Ringbauer led a team that experimentally simulated Deutsch’s model of CTCs for the very first time, testing and confirming many aspects of the two-decades-old theory. Their findings are published in Nature Communications. Much of their simulation revolved around investigating how Deutsch’s model deals with the “grandfather paradox,” a hypothetical scenario in which someone uses a CTC to travel back through time to murder her own grandfather, thus preventing her own later birth. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

Deutsch’s quantum solution to the grandfather paradox works something like this:

Instead of a human being traversing a CTC to kill her ancestor, imagine that a fundamental particle goes back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it. If the particle flips the switch, the machine emits a particle—the particle—back into the CTC; if the switch isn’t flipped, the machine emits nothing. In this scenario there is no a priori deterministic certainty to the particle’s emission, only a distribution of probabilities. Deutsch’s insight was to postulate self-consistency in the quantum realm, to insist that any particle entering one end of a CTC must emerge at the other end with identical properties. Therefore, a particle emitted by the machine with a probability of one half would enter the CTC and come out the other end to flip the switch with a probability of one half, imbuing itself at birth with a probability of one half of going back to flip the switch. If the particle were a person, she would be born with a one-half probability of killing her grandfather, giving her grandfather a one-half probability of escaping death at her hands—good enough in probabilistic terms to close the causative loop and escape the paradox. Strange though it may be, this solution is in keeping with the known laws of quantum mechanics.

In their new simulation Ralph, Ringbauer and their colleagues studied Deutsch’s model using interactions between pairs of polarized photons within a quantum system that they argue is mathematically equivalent to a single photon traversing a CTC. “We encode their polarization so that the second one acts as kind of a past incarnation of the first,” Ringbauer says. So instead of sending a person through a time loop, they created a stunt double of the person and ran him through a time-loop simulator to see if the doppelganger emerging from a CTC exactly resembled the original person as he was in that moment in the past.

By measuring the polarization states of the second photon after its interaction with the first, across multiple trials the team successfully demonstrated Deutsch’s self-consistency in action. “The state we got at our output, the second photon at the simulated exit of the CTC, was the same as that of our input, the first encoded photon at the CTC entrance,” Ralph says. “Of course, we’re not really sending anything back in time but [the simulation] allows us to study weird evolutions normally not allowed in quantum mechanics.”

Those “weird evolutions” enabled by a CTC, Ringbauer notes, would have remarkable practical applications, such as breaking quantum-based cryptography through the cloning of the quantum states of fundamental particles. “If you can clone quantum states,” he says, “you can violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle,” which comes in handy in quantum cryptography because the principle forbids simultaneously accurate measurements of certain kinds of paired variables, such as position and momentum. “But if you clone that system, you can measure one quantity in the first and the other quantity in the second, allowing you to decrypt an encoded message.”

“In the presence of CTCs, quantum mechanics allows one to perform very powerful information-processing tasks, much more than we believe classical or even normal quantum computers could do,” says Todd Brun, a physicist at the University of Southern California who was not involved with the team’s experiment. “If the Deutsch model is correct, then this experiment faithfully simulates what could be done with an actual CTC. But this experiment cannot test the Deutsch model itself; that could only be done with access to an actual CTC.”

Alternative reasoning
Deutsch’s model isn’t the only one around, however. In 2009 Seth Lloyd, a theorist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed an alternative, less radical model of CTCs that resolves the grandfather paradox using quantum teleportation and a technique called post-selection, rather than Deutsch’s quantum self-consistency. With Canadian collaborators, Lloyd went on to perform successful laboratory simulations of his model in 2011. “Deutsch’s theory has a weird effect of destroying correlations,” Lloyd says. “That is, a time traveler who emerges from a Deutschian CTC enters a universe that has nothing to do with the one she exited in the future. By contrast, post-selected CTCs preserve correlations, so that the time traveler returns to the same universe that she remembers in the past.”

This property of Lloyd’s model would make CTCs much less powerful for information processing, although still far superior to what computers could achieve in typical regions of spacetime. “The classes of problems our CTCs could help solve are roughly equivalent to finding needles in haystacks,” Lloyd says. “But a computer in a Deutschian CTC could solve why haystacks exist in the first place.”

Lloyd, though, readily admits the speculative nature of CTCs. “I have no idea which model is really right. Probably both of them are wrong,” he says. Of course, he adds, the other possibility is that Hawking is correct, “that CTCs simply don’t and cannot exist.” Time-travel party planners should save the champagne for themselves—their hoped-for future guests seem unlikely to arrive.

And yet ….

The models work. I’m not talking those Revell models you built as a kid but mathematical models that allow scientists to simulate possible versions of reality. There are some scientists who think that it may require a melding of the two models to make one cohesive theory. But the fact remains, the models work.

Almost every discovery in quantum physics has come from modeling, and much like chaos theory and faster than light travel, it has had to go through some revisions before things started to make sense.

That’s how science works. They don’t issue absolutes until they are proven facts.

Right now all of this is in the hunch stage. But it is a very exciting and enticing hunch.

And, like I said, those models work.

Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra “Do It With a Rockstar” (FULL UNCENSORED – NSFW) from Amanda Palmer on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
contact Bill McCormick
Your Ad Can Be Here Now!