The Affliction Known As Cricket.

Also known as Crest Ticket, Done-ay International, Bag Bish or imited lover 20/20, the affliction known as cricket is a Personality Disorder sometimes diagnosed as an incurable mental illness characterised by an obsession with wearing either brightly coloured pyjamas or plain, completely white attire; a sandpaper fetish, secretly carried by concealing it in the underwear; and a peculiar fascination with getting constant updates on the health of the batsman ('how is he?').

The aim of the game is for one side to repeatedly launch small red round missiles at the defending batsman who attempts to either dodge them or deflect them away without getting hit. If successful, sometimes the paired batsman at the missile launch end will instigate a furious scampering up and down the wicket where they change ends. Sometimes they can't seem to decide which end they wish to stay at, and, if the missile is retrieved and then thrown at the empty end when one or both are in the middle, one of them then walks off the ground disgusted - swearing, spitting, and bashing or throwing his bat on the turf.

Seemingly gluttons for punishment, the ridiculed team sends another hapless victim out to face more missiles. This continues until the defending team has run out of willing participants and the two teams change positions.

That  gives the team that was initially attacked a chance to extract revenge - now it's their turn to launch missiles at the other. This goes on for a set number of overs, hours or days depending on the format until they either give up, get sick of it, or are too injured to continue.

In the end, if a truce isn't called one team may be declared the victor; invariably this results in the losing side declaring war and demanding a rematch. There seems to be no end to this madness, teams always seeming to be able to find someone else to stage another battle with if the losing team vanishes.

Lots of money changes hands. There's the TV rights; players have to be paid in order to coerce them into facing more missiles: and spectators pay money to enter the stadiums and/or place bets on who will survive. Even more afflicted fans of the idiotically suicidal practice follow the sport via media, either in their homes as lounge lizards flat out drinking, or as wandering nomads tinkering with their mobile phones wherever they may be.

Such is the affliction known as cricket!

Climate Control

Climate Control is a (strikethru powerful tool strikethru) fanciful imagined situation whereby humans feebly attempt to manipulate the weather, showing total disregard and contempt for the laws of nature. Based on a flawed belief system using falsified unscientific government propaganda about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, naturally occurring fossil fuels are intended to be phased out and replaced with renewable technology such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, wave and tidal power generation, thereby crippling the economies of developing nations, effectively keeping billions of people in starvation. In the old days this philosophy was referred to as 'the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer'. These days it is marketed as a virtue-signalling politically correct Green Movement on an unprecedented global scale.

The idea is to preserve dominant capitalist western economies and minimalise the rest of the world. The recent rise of China with its cheap labour force has sent economic shock waves through the US, UK, Australia etc now scrambling to prevent India (with its even cheaper labour force) from dominating the market.

What a lot of Australians don't realise is that it is our coal (as the world's biggest exporter) that is fueling expanding Asian economies yet there is no end to the amount of polly-speak about conforming to Kyoto protocol, Paris accord, blah blah blah meanwhile we continue to sell out. How many Australians see through this farce? It is our coal that ran China's and now India's Gross National Product yet we spend billions on converting our power sources to renewables! By the way, China and India have always expressed (at COP24 & 25) that they have no intention of reducing carbon emissions until 2030! Meanwhile they enjoy easy access to cheap sources for power generation (fossil fuels, heard about them?) thus ensuring their economic expansion.

I want you to pause for just a moment and think about world starvation. The best way to stimulate the economies of developing countries is to facilitate the development of industry using the same implementation that current world powers took advantage of. In case you haven't been paying attention that means fossil fuels.

Now... technically nuclear isn't a renewable energy source, being mined like coal, oil and gas. However, there is an abiogenic theory about the origin of fossil fuels (popular in Russia) where they are supposedly generated from within the Earth's core unlike the minerals uranium and plutonium which are a finite source. But given that the traditional scientific theory that carbonaceous fuels originating from the Fossil Era are a result of heated and compressed organic matter is more popular and accepted, this places them in the unrenewable category with nuclear fuels.

Mankind has always loved to play God. The idea of being able to control the weather has fascinated the human psyche since the beginning of time. That it could be regulated is a kind of blasphemy akin to going against nature - pardon the pun, but the theory is actually quite 'unnatural'. Yet this obsession is the reason behind the whole Climate Control ideology. The concept of being able to control the entire planet's weather systems by reducing or at least containing just one trace gas's level to 1/2500th of the atmosphere is, well, more like religious fanaticism than well-grounded science.

Yep - CO₂ at 400 parts per million equals 0.04% of the atmosphere. Before the Industrial Age which began in roughly 1850 it was more like 0.03%. It took a little over a century to add the first third of that 0.01% increase, about forty years for the next third, and the last third was added since 2000. You can see in the graph (I have superimposed the temps over CO₂; the X and Y axes are the same for both) below that there doesn't seem to be a proportional increase in global temperatures, making the 'science' somewhat dubious!

Notice also the downward temperature trends from 1880-1910 and 1940-1975, indicating that there are other factors at work here and that Climate Control isn't as simple as reducing carbon emissions. The most glaring anomaly is that although one third of all carbon emissions from fossil fuels has been dumped in the last two decades there is no corresponding proportionate temperature increase. According to the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming theory they should be going through the roof. But they're not. We hear about 'hottest year on record ever' but were talking about a decimal point of a degree - as in 0.01 or 0.02°C. That's all it takes to rewrite the records.

The thermometer was invented by D. G. Fahrenheit in the 18th century in 1709-14 but it wasn't until the mid-1800s that temperature recording was perfected and accurate temperatures were kept. So we can take it for granted that since the beginning of the 19th C. Industrial Age we have fairly accurate data. Even though modern digitals measure to the decimal point, old thermometer readings were either rounded up or down or estimated to the decimal point by the person making the meteorological observations. More importantly, older instruments didn't respond to split-second rises and falls (known these days as digital noise) but often took ten minutes or so to visibly reflect any change of temperature. This greatly impacts on daily maxima and minima - modern digitals often producing higher and lower values than mercury and alcohol thermometers. So when we hear a press announcement about record temperatures it should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, how many of us can discern a change of 0.01°C?

More to the point - there are plenty of early record temperatures from the late 1800s and early 1900s that have been expunged or 'adjusted' by authorities to fit the CAGW agenda because 'it couldn't have possibly been that hot then so the equipment must've been faulty'. Well hello, back in those days sailors could circumnavigate the globe without falling off the edge. Modern science needs to stop painting those days with the tarred brush of the Flat Earth myth. In fact hardly anyone believed in the Flat Earth nonsense back then. It is a ploy invented by atheistic scientists to discredit the Church. Ever since ships have sailed the Earth landlubbers have witnessed them disappearing over the horizon, proving that the Earth wasn't flat.

Given that water boils and freezes at definite temperatures at sea level (a quick refresher course: 100°C and 0°C; 212°F, and -32°F and  given normal barometric pressure) there is no reason to suspect that old thermometers weren't calibrated properly. Even so, they wouldn't have been out by much. That's how it was done then and that method of calibration based on the characteristics of water still applies today. Despite global warming (one degree in the last century) water still behaves in exactly the same way that it used to in the 18th century (or any other for that matter). 

Numerology Schmology

Like astrology, it is very hard to find statistical evidence that proves that numerology works. But unlike astrology which is based on the movement of planets in a universe not created by mankind, the Gregorian calendar that we currently use is possibly a human invention and appears to be somewhat arbitrary.

Take, for instance, January 1. There is absolutely no spiritual, metaphysical or even scientific reason why this day should mark the start of a year. It harks back to the previous Roman Calendars when they decided that Janus (the Roman God of all beginnings) should be the first month of the year.

Fair enough. That hints that there may be some religious or at least mythological significance in its origin. But why start the month nine or ten days after the Solstice? That makes no sense at all - the result of various historical political and scientific developments that have shifted the calendar numbering around.

Besides that anomaly, there are mainly two greatly different numerical alphabet systems used - the ancient Chaldean-Hebrew and the Pythagorean (named as such although there is absolutely no evidence that Pythagoras even used it! He was simply interested in numbers, more to do with music and mathematics).

For the last forty years using both systems I have carefully noted and observed the numerological effects of various elements in my life - my name/s, date of birth, current year and date, street address, phone number, etcetera etcetera and have come to the conclusion that very little of it coincides with reality and in fact not only do both systems disagree but they often contradict one another and reality to boot.

I have lived in houses that add to 3 which is supposed to mean I'll be robbed and yet I haven't been; yet I've been burgled in houses that add to 5 or 7 or whatever. Go figure.

And what happens when you change language /alphabets? Even if Pythagoras did use numerology, he spoke Ancient Greek and certainly not English.. so what does that mean about the values given to each letter? It seems absurd to Anglicise Greek names because either way the values are different - at best hypothetical and at worst completely imagined or made-up.

Sure everyone, go ahead and use it for a bit of fun but not at the expense of common sense. And NEVER make important decisions on the basis of 'numerology'!

When I was 13 I changed my name from Jim to Sam (James is my middle name and that's what my parents used), nothing to do with numerology as I'd never even heard of it. Now here's the thing — in Pythagorean  that goes from 5 to 6; but in Chaldean it's 6 to 8. 6 is supposed to be an intellectual number and 5 & 8 are emotional. So according to which system used, I went from being emotional to intellectual or exactly THE OTHER WAY AROUND — which surely must negate any 'benefit' from any name change and makes a mockery of numerology.

Or am I being too intellectually emotional about the whole thing ha ha ha?

My conclusion is to avoid superstition or magical thinking. Go with your gut and use common sense. Same applies to gardening by astrology. Use proper horticultural practices and you'll get great results - most often regardless of the position of the planets! Gardening by an astrological calendar alone achieves little without proper preparation of the soil, planting in light or shade, the right weather and season, correct amount of water and nutrients etc.

Race: a huge blunder of science

IF you accept Darwinism you think we evolved from apes and that civilisations are a recent development. Even then, the Bible, which accepts creationism instead of evolution, narrates that humans have only inhabitated the planet for no more than 4, 5 or 6 thousand years. Either way due to geographical separation we have a scenario where many species were isolated on continents in some penultimate period.

Modern events have seen all of that change, where migration and domination of introduced species has led to loss of diversification, a supposed 'sin of mankind', the result of European colonisation and globalisation. Sadly most if not all of this has happened under the banner of religion, either Christianity or to a lesser extent Islam.

Yet there is another train of thought, that of the Vedas - where Ice Ages have periodically interrupted millions of years of humanity by forcing retreat and dieback on a massive scale. The last period of maximum glaciation ended roughly ten thousand years ago, and since then the melting ice caps and glaciers have changed the topography of the planet vastly. The Vedic thought is that their culture has survived through all of this for millions of years by retreating to areas protected by the Himalayas.

The problem with science, the substitute "Almighty" of atheists, is that it is relative and imperfect (unlike the Absolute, Divine Creator, Supreme Being, Big Dude In The Sky or whatever you identify with) and can make monumental mistakes.

Take classifying humanity into different races, for example; a huge blunder in science. [Quaintly put, the original conceptual division of anthropology was simple - Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid. This ran into problems when other "races" were identified, such as the indigenous Ainu of Japan for example, or lumping Polynesian, Melanesian and other Pacific Ocean islanders all together]. Simply put, races don't exist - in reality they are an artificial academic construct, a result of geographical separation over long periods of time. Eventually there will be so much "interbreeding" that it will be impossible to distinguish one "race" from another. The 'modern scientific' assumption of apparent racial distinction is simply a result of the geographical separation of civilisations. One day there'll be kangaroos in Europe just like our colonial rabbits here in Oz. Maybe even Polar bears in Antarctica and penguins at the North Pole. We've already got feral camels and buffalo in the outback and California loves its Eucalyptus gum trees. I say diversity is a good thing and in the future there will be no such thing as an 'introduced species'. It's all just a matter of time.

Sure, there are genetic differences in the DNA of so-called "races". But that occurs even within families. The fact that humans can mate and produce viable offspring proves that we are all one species and that race is a nonsense concept.

So how did all this come about? Even if you accept Darwin's proposition (which I don't) that we evolved from apes (well I'll be a monkey's uncle!), that doesn't explain the sudden recent emergence of civilisation. That evolving ape thing is supposed to be millions of years ago (emphasis on supposed) yet suddenly society springs up 5,000 years ago?

This geographical separation phenomenon has given us a skewed vision of history. Before the technological advancement of sailing boats, continents like Australia and the Americas remained largely inaccessible to the outside world apart from from migration on foot which is what happened. Without genetic diversity, species became "indigenous" purely because they were isolated, no migration. In the future all of this will change. Trying to preserve an outmoded paradigm defies common sense, is useless sentimentality, and flies in the face of progress and evolution.

What happened in the past is what people erroneously call an Ice Age. The fact is we are still in one, as evidenced by the polar caps. There have been at least five ice ages in Earth's billions of years history, and between each one the frozen caps disappear (Galcial/Interglacial Periods). What people really mean by "the last Ice Age" is the last stadial within the Glacial Period, which peaked about 20,000 years ago. Between each Glacial Maximum is an interstadial period of warmness. What alarmists label as global warming is actually a periodic cyclic event, the interstadial we are currently experiencing, somewhat like seasons but happening on a much longer time period of tens of thousands of years.

So picture the Earth before the last glacial period, which lasted about 130,000 years (interstadials vary from 10 to 50 thousand years; stadials, or glacial periods are much longer - generally 100 to 500 thousand years) and ended 20,000 years ago. When everything froze over, all life had to retreat to the few remaining areas of warmth that could sustain them. And where was that?

Time for a quick lesson in geography. Nearly all of the Earth's major mountain chains run North-South. The Rocky Mountains of USA, the Scandinavias, the Andes of South America, the Great Dividing Range of Australia, the Atlas Mountains of Africa - all offer little to no protection in halting the advancing Ice Age as it crept towards the Equator from both polar regions.

The exception to this are the East-West Himalayas of India, the Swiss Alps of Europe and the Caucasus and Zagras of Turkey and the Middle East. These are the only places of refuge between the North Pole and the Equator (there is no Southern Hemisphere equivalent) and it is no accident that this is where the world's oldest civilisations come from. South of these ranges, on the Plains between the mountain peaks and the Equator there were no glaciers. They stopped at the mountains. This is why all the Earth's oldest civilisations come from Equatorial regions.

Modern historians mark recorded history from the time humans started writing stuff down. That doesn't mean there was no history before then - again, about 5,000 years ago - just that it wasn't recorded, passed instead by oral tradition, as people had better memories before Kali Yuga started in 3012 BC.

Consider the possibility that many civilisations died out during the Glacial Period (approx. 130,000 - 10,000 BC), or became isolated, lived in caves or underground, eventually dumbed-down through separation and lost their knowledge. Perhaps this is why we are 'taught' (given pictures) of stupid Neanderthal Man groping with clumsy tools as being our ancestors. Yet there are cultures that claim to go so far back in time that their origin is impossible to pinpoint.

Vedic civilisation is one such culture and claims to be millions of years old. Some other surviving cultures are the Chinese, the Australian Aborigines, and of course the African Negroid - a term now not encouraged because it is racist.

Which brings us back to the original context of this whole story. The idea of dividing humanity up into separate races is in itself inherently racist and an invented, artificial construct. It is purely geographical separation over time (as a result of the "Ice Age") that caused the lack of genetic diversity contributing to a limited range of physical features - hence, a supposedly distinct "race".

It is the nature of survival that if a culture's needs are met there is no reason for peoples to migrate, let alone travel long distances seeking adventure. In previous Ages society was more  cultivated and concentrated on spiritual and religious endeavour. All this changed 5,000 years ago with the coming of Kali Yuga, the lowest of all ages culture wise (there are four and they rotate in succession). Losing their spirituality, civilisations became enamoured with lust for sense gratification resulting in capitalism, colonisation and conquering of foreign lands. That's where the ships come in - really high tech stuff in those days.

We tend to look back and judge everything as being really primitive in the old days but it's all relative. We take books for granted but before the invention of the Gutenberg press everything was copied via handwriting. Sometimes books were limited to a few dozen issues. Mass publication was such a boon that it even changed Christianity! No longer were citizens dependent on the Church for scripture; each home could have a Holy Bible and practice worship without having to be dependent on priests and cow-tow to the Roman Catholic Church. They no longer had a monopoly. This is how all the different denominations took hold and the origin of the "Bible Society" began.

Nowadays we look upon books as old-fashioned, outdated technology. Yet like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Vedas, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Tibetan Book of the Dead and so many other scriptures, books do not require electricity and are available for use all the time regardless of circumstances unless you don't have a candle!

With no recorded history academics have a hard time proving anything before the invention of writing. Academics discard oral history as mere anecdotal 'mythology'. History starts at the point stuff was written down. Before that it's prehistoric ha ha. Not that long ago, forget about dinosaurs!

Take for instance the Guru-Disciple relationship, formally known as shishya. Say you want to learn how to play the mridanga, an Indian hand-drum. You approach a teacher and promise to serve them, and in return they impart their knowledge verbally and with demonstration and instruction.

It is an oral tradition. Each way of tapping or hitting the drum has a name (bol), and one recites the bol name as each stroke is played. The first lesson is te-re-ke-ta. This simultaneous speaking and playing sets up a dynamic that will enable the student to later sing and play the rhythm once learnt. Sure, it can be written down but it is not necessary. I learnt to play mridanga  primarily from written down stuff (the internet) but it was absolutely vital to hear actual playing (YouTube) to confirm that I'd got it down right. It's like learning a poem or a riddle or a funny joke. Once learnt properly the student then becomes master and can faithfully teach the same knowledge to a new student.

Historians have no interest in any of this because there is no evidence, no "written account of history". That doesn't mean knowledge wasn't imparted or exchanged or that nothing happened, just that it isn't recorded.

So effectively all history amounts to the stuff that was recorded (in those days written down) as if people were too dumb to recall and recite it later! Historians date the Vedas as being no older than a few thousand years. But the fact is that's just the time they were written down. Before that they were passed down for millions of years by oral tradition just like all cultural traditions are these days. There is no telling how old any of them are.

There is debate about when Australian Aborigines migrated. Some say there were two or more waves, 40, 60, maybe 120 thousand years ago. Chinese dynasties can only be dated from the time they wrote shit down. Same thing with the Egyptians and papyrus. Funny enough it all traces back to 5,000 years ago... the start of Kali Yuga (again!) when memories deteriorated and they had to start writing everything down.

'Cos that's when history "began".

Back then everyone was a joke teller.

Western Astronomy vs Puranic Cosmology

As an astrologer I am familiar with western astronomy and to a lesser extent Jyotish astrology and the Vedic Cosmology model. Jyotish is based on the 'modern' Siddhantic model which closely aligns with astronomy whereas Vedic Cosmology is based on the ancient Puranic model.

The thing I am trying to address here is the potential humiliation of the TOVP if they try to build a model based on the spiritual, non-scientific (some would say 'mythological') Puranic model of ancient times – so old that it is literally pre-historic. Modern Jyotish is based largely on the Surya Siddhanta (of which Śrīla Bhaktisiddhanta wrote a commentary) and differs vastly from the Puranic model, aligning more closely with Western astronomy, the difference being that western is geocentric and uses the tropical zodiac and Jyotish uses instead the sidereal zodiac and is heliocentric - a difference in point of view rather than mathematic abstractions. Nevertheless, Siddhantic Cosmology uses basically the same formulae for calculations as Western astronomy, so it makes little difference when it comes to transits, eclipses, etc which system you use.  

This is all semantics regarding NASA vs Rahu and Ketu. The Moon's North Node is the same as Rahu. The Moon's South Node is Ketu. The Moon's North and South Nodes mark the points where the Sun/Earth/Moon orbital planes intersect. If a lunation (new or full) occurs near the nodes an eclipse occurs. That is the geometry. It is not necessary for NASA to acknowledge Rahu and Ketu as planets for their calculations to be made. The Nodes are invisible points and the calculation of the timing of eclipses is exactly the same no matter what they are called in either astronomy or Jyotish. You can argue that their knowledge is deficient but it doesn't change the geometry. 

Back to Puranic Cosmology. On the subject of geometry, the Moon cannot always be further away than the Sun otherwise it can never form a (dark unlit) New Moon. As it approaches a conjunction with the Sun (a Lunation but not an eclipse) if it was on the other side it would appear almost full, not the crescent we see as a result of the geometry of its proximity. The argument that the brilliance of the Sun hides the Moon's illumination does not account for the crescent we see. (A full moon occurs when we, Earth, are between the Sun and Moon. A new moon is when the Moon is between Earth and the Sun. If it was on the other side it would be Full. Do you understand the geometry? If not I shall draw a diagram.) New Moons can only occur when it is inside the Earth/Sun or it. There is no their way. There is no other way. There is no other way.   

Therefore SB must be describing the Cosmos in some other time or circumstance, eg on another plane or dimension, as in viewed from the Heavenly Planets or a different cycle of Yugas where our current situation is not the normal cosmology that generally prevails. We know for a fact that the orbits of all bodies change over millennia, even the Fixed Stars. To say that Vedic Cosmology is static and always applies is a questionable proposition.

Therefore, what the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes (Puranic cosmology) and what we see (modern astronomy) don't have to concur for both to be valid. Different time and circumstance. For the TOVP to build a Puranic model and say "this is reality, NASA has got it all wrong", and expect to be well received – well, they're stark raving mad.

No longer do I feel discumbobulated with the clash of paradigms. We use modern methods to observe and calibrate the current real world we live in. We use the Puranas to marvel at the incomprehensible timeless qualities of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and to wonder at the vastness of all His creation.