Paranormalpeopleonline.com

In this place was once a pernicious though wholly unintentional lie.  The link you just clicked, had, for quite a while, directed many people – people who apparently were unable to comprehend the allegorical nature of the post – to a list of theological demons.  Even in the preamble to the post, it was clearly stated that demons do not exist, that they are a metaphorical representation of ideas, traditions and people that were disliked by the early church.  We all know, even the fundamentalist among us, that whatsoever the church dislikes shall suffer persecution and vilification at the behest of papal decree.  And so it was with demons.

The aforementioned list, complete with its inaccuracies and misinterpretations (I’m not perfect), was wholly misleading to any who chose to skip over that one simple caveat, and who perhaps took the list to be literal telling of the nature, existence and prevalence of demons, as is popularised by Hollywood.

DEMONS DO NOT EXIST

Those of you sitting underneath your sunbrella umbrella, drinking your drinks and reading this with dibelief and for all the rest of you who would argue the point, I answer only by stating that you, given your position on the subject, are ignorant of the teachings of your faith.  It is funny to me, in an ironic sense if anything, that this stance I take on the argument will be easier swallowed by nearly anyone, than its theological opposite.  That opposite being, not that demons exist (they do not), but that God doesn’t exist.

This is a position I support, but this is not the purpose of this post, which is a retraction, if you will, of the insinuation that demons are some real world entity, pious boogeymen, so to speak, with some actual power over the mental and physical will of man.

So, as you can see, the offending content is no more, and commenting has been suspended so as to avoid the ensuing theological diarrhea one would logically expect from such a thing.  I cannot undo the damage my words have done up to this point, whether through the inaccuracy of my research or through the misinterpretation of its presentation, but I can prevent the same from infecting the minds of others who would seek answers in the subject.

Twitter is ablaze with commentary and complaint about a blatant mockery of a subject that needs no help being maligned by mainstream culture.  All social media outlets are vibrating with innuendo, with pointed conversation about the meaning and the background and the audacity of this group of so-called researchers and investigators, who’ve come together to manufacture a caricature of the Paranormal Community at large.

I am talking about the much acclaimed ‘Extreme Paranormal’ as presented by the A&E television network on October 19, 2009.

That’s a date to remember, one to mark down for posterity and to celebrate annually, as the day network TV declared war on the learned culture of Paranormal Enthusiasts the world over.

If you were expecting a point-by-point review of this idiocy, then I’m sorry to say that you’ll be disappointed, though if you happened to catch ‘Extreme Paranormal’, then disappointment is a feeling you’ll be familiar with.

The so-called “irreverent” Paranormal Investigators Shaun, Nathan and Jason, as described in the A&E marketing hype for the show, may better be described as the irrelevant, or the ignorant Paranormal Investigators Shaun Burris, Nathan Schoonover and Jason Gowin of Ghostman and Demon Hunter para-cast relative fame, the self-proclaimed “Shock Jocks” of the supernatural.

As anyone who is familiar with my archive of complaints against A&E and their other abominations of paranormal mockery can tell you, I am no fan of the Arts and Entertainment network, at least in so far as their portrayal of Paranormal research is concerned, and ‘Extreme Paranormal’ is no exception.  Though, in this case I’m not entirely certain if the fault lies with Burris, Schoonover and Gowin or with the A&E executives who script and edit the hell out of every show they produce.

Actually, I’ll have to recant that last sentence; I know who is at fault…all of them.  It seems recently that all television networks have to do is wave a wad of cash in front of anyone even remotely connected to the reality of paranormal research and voila, they’ve got a show.  The words integrity, honesty and transparency seem to mean nothing to them, and before I’m accused of not seeing the whole picture, I am painfully aware that A&E’s fine print disclaimer advises their audience to maintain the air of entertainment laced throughout the show.

But let’s talk for a minute about responsibility.  Who, ultimately is responsible when a lesser informed fan of the show decides that cutting their own wrist in an effort to communicate with the dead is not only a reasonable idea, but a good one?  Who is responsible when groups of uninformed and disrespectful children decide that, just like our ‘irreverent” trio here, they want to explore the empty hallways of their local abandoned factory, warehouse or similar building, and in doing so, burn the place to the ground in an effort to reenact the entirely asinine display they absorbed from the screen of their television?

All this and I haven’t even started to cover the baseless assumptions, utter and complete lack of planning, and what seemed to be a total lack of understanding and ability to use the equipment they brought along (not including the circular saw).

A parabolic microphone…really?  Could someone please pull that jackass aside and explain to him what a parabolic microphone does.  Or how about the $10,000 infrared camera?  I’m sure this was a dream come true for Ghostman and Demon Hunter, they finally made the big time, though one must wonder what, exactly, they did to catch the attention of A&E exec’s.  It certainly wasn’t anything ground breaking from a research standpoint, nor was it anything of an academic nature at all.  I’m guessing (emphasis on the word guessing), that it had much more to do with social connections they may have with the likes of Ryan Buell and PRS, of Paranormal State.

I, for one, am sick to death of answering to the blatantly wrong idea portrayed by A&E and their various casts of so-called paranormal experts, and in the wake of this, their most recent insult to anyone who calls themselves an Investigator of Paranormal nature, I am calling for an active boycott of the Arts and Entertainment network, also known as A&E.

They continually insult our intelligence, our constitution and our patience, and it’s about damn time we stood up and explained to them what this community is all about.

I will no longer watch, review or mention A&E or any of their programs in any form. I will no longer give my precious attention to any of their characters, spokesmen or affiliates, and in all humbled honesty, I ask you to do the same.

Most everyone these days has heard of the term Spontaneous Human Combustion, otherwise known as SHC; the spontaneous ignition of human flesh and subsequent burning of the body, usually until death and often until there are no remains to collect and analyse.  Quite gruesome deaths if you ask me, though there have been cases of reported SHC wherein the victim did not die.

In the last 300 years there have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 cases of SHC worldwide, though that number will vary depending on your source.  Of those 200-some reports of persons bursting into flame like roman candles, only the most recent claims have stood to closer scrutiny, and some scientists think they have the phenomena explained.

Before we get into the science of SHC, let’s review the common characteristics of Human Combustion:

1)    As the name suggests, there is to be a certain spontaneity to the event; a sudden ignition similar to a small explosion of flame.  Surviving victims have reported feeling no heat or discomfort prior to realising that they were ablaze, though many, if not most victims of SHC were either alone or sleeping at the time of ignition, or both.

2)    Analysis of the remains and scenes of known cases of SHC often reveal extreme heat, sometimes in excess of 1000◦, yet the surrounding environment is found characteristically unharmed.  Even nearby draperies and furniture remains largely unaffected by the heat and flame, and in many cases, the very bed or chair in which the victim was seated survives the event with little damage.

3)    No external source of ignition and no accelerant are found near or associated to the body.  This point can be, and usually is argued, as many of the cases revealed both recent prior consumption of alcohol and cigarettes, and many researchers point to those elements as potential causes of non-SHC fire being to blame.  Though this argument fails to acknowledge the second criteria in evaluating an SHC event (See above).

4)    For unknown reasons, a majority of cases, in which the victim dies as a result of SHC, a single limb or extremity is left behind.  The limb is normally severed by the heat/fire and, like the surrounding environment, remains largely unaffected by the fire (aside from the fact that the rest of the body was consumed).

In recent years there have been numerous explanations and theories presented for SHC, most of which have failed to impress fire officials, scientists and sceptics alike.  Some of these hypotheses include: pyrokinesis, deliberate suicide by arson, accidental ignition by cigarette, low voltage electrocution, freak lightning strikes, demon attacks and even the Smite of God.

On the trail of these less conventional and sometimes completely ridiculous theories, Dr, John De Haan conducted an experiment for the cameras of BBC 1’s, QED program, in an effort to reveal the truth behind SHC.  What followed is now commonly known as the Wick Effect.

It should be said that Dr. De Haan is an adamant sceptic when it comes to Spontaneous Human Combustion, and that he happily attributes all previous and future claims of SHC to the Wick Effect.  This is important to remember as, while his theory does provide some explanation for many SHC cases, it does not tie a neat little bow around every report in history and present the phenomena as “solved”.  However, at our current position of scientific understanding, the Wick Effect is a more suitable hypothesis in the face of all others.

To briefly explain the chemical mechanics of the Wick Effect; Dr De Haan showed in his experiment, that under the correct conditions, a subtle ignition source such as a cigarette butt, can ignite clothing that rests close the surface of the victims skin.  During the initial phase of the event, the rising heat can split the victims flesh exposing natural subcutaneous fat, which when exposed begins to melt.  This melted fat becomes soaked into the unburned clothing and quickly becomes an oil wick.

Apparently, the chemical composition of the subcutaneous fats is such that when ignited it can sustain the flame at a very high temperature, but allow only a very small, low flame.  Dr. De Haan believes that this explains several key characteristics of SHC, and can even account for the often reported connection of alcohol consumption and cigarettes.

In his experiment, Dr De Haan used a pig corpse as a human analog, and set up what he believed to be the common conditions of a naturally occurring SHC event.  However, since the ignition source for true SHC cases is entirely unknown, De Haan was forced to use a small amount of gasoline as an accelerant and a wooden match to ignite the pig.

The results of the experiment showed that the Wick Effect phenomena could sufficiently answer many of the questions surrounding SHC; the corpse of the pig was entirely consumed along the area that was exposed to flame, after several hours ablaze.  Apparently the flames were quite low for the duration of the fire, even though the heat exceeded 800◦.  Upon examination, De Haan confirmed that the consumed portions of the pig had been completely obliterated by the fire, including flesh, fats and bone.

While the Wick Effect is not a new phenomenon, in fact experiments similar to De Haan’s were conducted as early as 1963 in Leeds (UK), others have been shy to attribute all cases of SHC to the Wick Effect, and Dr De Haan thinks he knows why.

He claims that the gruesome and surprising state of the bodies, coupled with the virtually untouched surroundings at the scene, often traumatise fire officials and force them to believe that there must be a supernatural explanation.

Whatever you choose to believe, it is clear that the victims of SHC, whether attributed to God, psychic misfortune or simple science, suffered intensely in their own fiery hell.  If we can accept the theory of the Wick Effect as an explanation for the spontaneous incineration of unsuspecting people, maybe we’re one step closer to finding a way to prevent others from suffering the same fate.

Empire of Illusion[1] is a truly disturbing book. Chris Hedges has illustrated, succinctly, the impending future of the American economy. Are we to believe that the situation is as dire as Hedges and his many quoted colleagues suggest? I’m not the one to answer that question, but I would mention that the truth must be in there somewhere.

At the risk of sounding a slight bit prudish, I found his chapter on “love” to be somewhat distasteful. His point, which was reasonable and probably right on the money, could have been made in much less graphic language. Though, I suppose, when one is battling the ever present illusions of pseudo-events and corporatism, a little shock value can go a long way.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even if I came away with a newfound consternation for my own future.  Being Canadian, I wonder what the landscape of the world will look like after the death of Americanism.

Reading a book such as this brings with it a certain sense of depressive foreboding, and in-so-far as it holds the potential to shatter the illusions of our ‘Reality TV world‘, the reader must find some purpose to the book, beyond simply disillusionment.  For my part, Empire of Illusion inspired me to contact my local Federal Government Representative, and ask what precisely is being done to protect me, a Canadian citizen, from the collapse of Americanism.  Below is:

An Open Letter To Gary Goodyear MP, On The Imminent Collapse Of Americanism

Dear Mr. Goodyear,

I’m writing to you today out of concern for my family, my neighbours and my community.  I, like many Canadians, feel disconnected from the Canadian politico, in fact, I feel as though I know more about American politics than our own.

That said, I have recently finished reading Pulitzer Prize Winner Chris Hedges’ newest book titled: Empire of Illusions, The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, which, if you haven’t, I would strongly encourage you to read.  This book paints a frighteningly bleak picture of the economic future of our closest international neighbours.  It speaks of the illusions that have been spoon fed to middle and lower class Americans over the past 30 years and longer, illusion such as corporatism, commercialism, free market economics and popular entertainment.  It speaks of corporate control over government and the coming failures of all social systems, and soon of an entire economy.  Most frighteningly, it speaks of a voting populous who knows nothing of the pending collapse of their county, of a people who would rather indulge in the fantasy of pseudo-events presented by reality TV and corporately controlled punditry, than to protest the gross injustices that take place behind a thin veil of patriotism and national security.  Even to a Canadian, Mr. Hedges presents a sobering picture.

Now, I’m a moderately educated somewhat intelligent man.  I’m in my mid-thirties, married, employed and one could say that I’m a member of Ontario’s lower-middle class citizenry, though some months my household teeters just above the poverty line.  From this position, and having just put down Mr. Hedges book, I find myself wondering what my government is doing to protect me, to insulate my community from the apparently inevitable collapse of our largest international trading partner.

I am not so naïve as to misunderstand that Mr. Hedges is using his medium to support a political narrative of his own, and I do take his words with a grain of salt.  However, I can’t help but notice that the same mechanisms used by American Corporatists to corrupt government, to hijack the economy and to plunder the rights of their citizenry, are entrenched here in Canada as well.  We watch American TV programming (though in large part due only to a lack of options), we emulate American consumerism, our primary and secondary schools struggle with literacy and motivation, our higher learning resources are starting to resemble elitist job-skills farms rather than the purveyors of knowledge and wisdom they were intended to be.  In short Mr. Goodyear, it appears that we are following our American neighbours down the proverbial toilet.

Colloquially, to be disillusioned is thought of as a negative idea, as though it is a better thing to be fooled by the illusions of TV and popular culture, than to shed the naïveté of a society that is addicted to entertainment and to actually think about the consequences of our collective actions.  When I look around myself, at coworkers, at the children of neighbours and friends and at a Canadian political culture I know nearly nothing about, I am truly afraid.  Our youth is distracted by the allure of the American dream, a dream that has long been dead, and in their distraction lays all the opportunity needed by Corporate Elites to plunder our rights as well.  The first glimpse of which might be seen in Mr. McGuinty’s Harmonised Sales Tax(?).  Whether we survive the imminent collapse of Americanism in our world or not, we are standing on the edge of a precipice and I fear that when the worst happens, we won’t even recognise that the ground beneath our feet disappeared long ago.

This is a plea, rather than a complaint or a suggestion, a plea for help in surviving the coming years.  I don’t know what to do, I don’t know who else to ask and I don’t know if it’s already too late.  What I do know is, my household is already in a precarious position, and I can’t imagine what life will be like in Mr. Hedges’ future.

Please take my sentiment to our leaders in Ottawa, in the hopes that my voice may be added to those already being heard on these issues.

Yours Truly,

Martin J. Clemens

(Disillusioned, but not yet disenchanted)

At the time of writing, no response has been received by Mr. Goodyear, nor any representative of his office.  Empire of Illusions is available for purchase in Commercial Indignation’s Recommended Reading Bookstore.

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[1] Empire of Illusions: The End of Literacy and The Triumph of Spectacle – Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning author of the bestselling War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, and writes for many publications including Foreign Affairs, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, Granta and Mother Jones. He is also a columnist for Truthdig.com.

Is there a hidden agenda behind the dismantling of SETI?  Has contact been made, making the 60 year old, budget busting SETI project obsolete?  The possibility exists, and recently declassified NSA documents just may prove the case.

I recently found an obscure weblog, titled Alien Examiner[1], by way of a shared link in my twitter feed.  Despite the poorly written blog post I was greatly intrigued by the content of the post.  It’s title?  “Official NSA Document Verifies That We Have Been Contacted By Extraterrestrials.”

Now, I wouldn’t normally pay much attention to such a story, the internet is rife with alien contact conspiracy theories, some of which would make for good science fiction novels.  This one, however, got my attention.  Hyperlinked at the bottom of the post is a document, supposedly a declassified NSA document, housed on the Official NSA website; that’s the National Security Agency.

The document is difficult to read, but as the post on Alien Examiner points out, “An incredible potentially groundbreaking document relating to the fact that we have intercepted extraterrestrial signals been made public by the NSA.  On its own official nsa.gov website the document is entitled “Key To Extraterrestrial Messages” – by Campaigne.” (sic)

Normally I would be shaking my head and moving on, though a quick look at the document itself, gave me pause to read on.  The document is titled Key to the Extraterrestrial Message and it is authored by a Dr. H. Campaigne, who’s name brings a single result via Google Search, which happens to be a UFO Disclosure website that is non-functional at the time of writing.

The opening paragraph of the document is as follows:

“Dr. Campaigne presented a series of 29 messages from outer space in “Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” NSA Journal, Vol XI No. 2, pp101, and in the special mathematics and engineering issue of The Journal pp117.”

The rest of the document goes on, at length, about the mathematical translation of various radio signals, creating an alphabet of sorts and attempts to provide syntax to what is believed to be an alien language.  Though the alphabet seems to be decipherable, the message itself, at least according to the document at hand, is unintelligible but not a natural phenomenon.

The 11 page document does an excellent job of whetting one’s appetite, though is frustratingly devoid of any real answers.  To my mind, the fact that it is housed on the National Security Agencies own website (in archive), as a declassified document, gives weight to the overall idea, though aside from the above, I could find no direct admission that the signals being translated were deemed to be factually alien.

What we could be seeing is one man’s interpretation of natural signals, rather than an admission that extraterrestrial contact has been made.  We see no evidence of peer review, nor of the NSA’s position on the proposal, so ultimately, we lack the smoking gun per se.

At this point I leave the interpretation of the evidence to the reader, as I am unwilling to draw a conclusion from so little information, though I remain interested nonetheless.

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/key_to_et_messages.pdf

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[1] Alien Examiner, Official NSA Document Verifies That We Have Been Contacted By Extraterrestrials: http://alienexaminer.com/2011/05/02/official-nsa-document-verifies-that-we-have-been-contacted-by-extraterrestrials/

This was my first reading of Inferno, having heard much ado about Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy. I was impressed, though no theological conversion took place.  I chose, on recommendation, Allen Mandelbaum’s English translation from Italian, and I believe that recommendation was well advised.

It struck me that the language might have been considered risky and rebellious in the 11th century, and yet was more than adequate to convey the horrors of Hell in the 21st century. Though my lack of knowledge and experience with Italian, Greek and Roman ancient history meant that I did not understand every reference to every real world villain. It did seem oddly self serving that Dante should meet so many familiar personalities in Hell, considering the sheer number of tortured souls who’s path he crossed.

Either way, I greatly enjoyed the Comedy and would recommend this version to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the poet and his poetry. I look forward to readings of Purgatorio and Paradisio both, and I’m hoping to find Mandelbaum’s translations in each case.

Buy a copy of Dante’s Inferno today, though Amazon.com

When I bought this book I was specifically looking for material on Memetics, and I found it puzzling that Chapter’s had classified it as New Age & Occult. I know that others supposedly like it, at least other books dealing with Memetics, are typically found in the Science section. Having just finished the book, I now know why I found it where I did.

Even though I’m new to the subject, I found the first several chapters to be a somewhat rudimentary introduction to the topic, and then the self-help sales pitch hit me.

I wanted to learn about the emerging science of Memetics, not be issued value judgments on the validity of one meme over another. The author is quite witty and I did enjoy reading it, even though I grew tired of his shameless and pretty much constant self-promotion. Given the choice again, I think I’d choose another title .

I gave this book two out of five.

The Mayor of a small farming town in southern France threatens to call in the military to block throngs of 2012 doomsday’ers from inundating the quiet slopes of Pic de Bugarach.

Deep in the heart of France’s wine country, Bugarach is the epitome of a small French town, with a population of 189 people; it sits nestled at the foot of Pic de Bugarach, which is the tallest peak of the Corbières mountain range in the Aude region of southern France.  But there are people who believe that Bugarach is home to more than just a slow European pace and sprawling vineyards…some people believe that mountain to be a whole lot more than just a mountain.

Recently, UFO’ers and 2012 doomsday’ers have been flocking to the small town to find what they believe will be refuge from the apocalypse.  Where this particular idea originated is difficult to pin down, but origins aside, many believers are convinced that the area will be spared at the end of times.

Of the many theories and stories that surround this mountain, the one that has the towns people up in arms states that a giant alien ‘garage’ exists beneath the mountain, and believers hope that the beings who reside there will be gracious enough to suffer a few passengers on their departure.[1] Others believe that the area harbours a special energy that will protect the inhabitants throughout whatever events transpire in December of 2012.

Other theories suggest that Bugarach was a stop on the journey of Mary Magdalene and Jesus as they trekked across the Corbières in 33AD, or that Bugarach is the resting place of the lost continent of Lemuria, home to the ‘people of Mu’.[2] It is a place of spiritual strength and mystery and has been said to have “special magnetic properties”.

The mountain is a dormant volcano that feeds hot springs at its base and is also called The-Mountain-With-Its-Feet-In-The-Air, following what is believed to have been a volcanic eruption that left the mountain top upside down.

It’s interesting to note, however, that Bugarach was the inspiration for Steven Spielbergs’s 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (though the actual mountain used in the film was Devil’s Tower in Wyoming). Bugarach is also said to be the place where Jules Vern found the inspiration for his classic tale Journey to the Center of the Earth, though die hard Vernians would say that this was where he found the actual entrance to the underworld.

Interesting as these anecdotes are, none of this speaks to any real evidence that Bugarach is fundamentally different than any other place on Earth.  Nor does it speak to the validity of the 2012 legend itself.  The only thing anyone knows for certain is that the Mayan Calendar will end on December 21, 2012 and that Bugarach is a beautiful place being sullied by hundreds of believers.  What will happen in 2012 is completely unknown, and even though cooler heads suggest nothing at all will happen, we do know that the unknown is little more than the hiding place for fear and superstition.

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[1] Henry Samuel, The Telegraph, “French Village which will ‘survive 2012 armageddon’ plagued by visitors”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8217001/French-village-which-will-survive-2012-Armageddon-plagued-by-visitors.html

[2] Val Wineyard, UFO-Digest, “Bugarach – The Mystic Mountain”, http://www.ufodigest.com/article/bugarach-mystic-mountain

Secret facilities, hidden deep in northern Germany, leaked and de-classified documents, anecdotal evidence and urban legend, all of it pointing in one direction.

And what direction is that?

Die Glocke or in English, “The Bell” is believed to have been Nazi Germany’s famed Wunderwaffe or Wonder Weapon.  It was the culmination of Nazi Germany’s brightest scientific minds.  The same people who brought us the V1 and V2 rockets (the V2 being the first manmade object to leave our atmosphere and plunge into the cold depths of space) are also thought to have been involved in the development of a weapon so terrible that some accounts describe factions of these scientists refusing to release technical plans to Nazi leaders for fear of what might be done with the technology.  Incidentally, these were also the men who eventually helped to design and build the first atomic bomb.

The Bell, however, is a complete mystery, though there is no shortage of conspiracy surrounding it.  First word of Die Glocke was presented to the free world in 2000 by one Igor Witkowski, a polish author who wrote a book titled (in Polish) Prawda O Wunderwaffe or The Truth About The Wonder Weapon. Witkowski claimed that he met with an unnamed Polish Intelligence contact in 1997, from which he reports to have been shown classified Polish Government documents detailing Nazi weapons research projects.  Die Glocke was one of those projects.

The story of Die Glocke was later picked up by British author Nick Cook who added his own flavour to the tale in his own book The Hunt for Zero Point.  Whatever the truth about “The Bell”, conspiracy theorists and even some in the general scientific community are convinced that the Bell did in fact exist and that it was a machine of incredible power.

For the record, no one really knows what Wundwerwaffe actually was, or even if Nazi Germany was really developing anything other than conventional weaponry.  Most mainstream science and historical experts are adamant that the V series rockets were the pinnacle of German technology at the time, and that the Bell is a simple urban legend.

But I’m not about to leave it there…you knew I wouldn’t.

Most who believe that the Bell exists, or existed at some point, are convinced that it was a machine built for a fantastic and sinister purpose.  Many believe that it was either a working time machine or an antigravity machine.  If you believe what you see on TV and read on the internet, the Third Reich was indeed undertaking some rather nefarious research and development just prior to the end of the war in 1945. That is, aside from their ballistic and chemical weapons programs.

Allegedly an experiment was carried out by Third Reich scientists working for the SS in a German facility known as Der Riese (“The Giant”) near the Wenceslaus mine and close to the Czech border.  Die Glocke is described as being a device “made out of a hard, heavy metal”, approximately 9 feet wide and 12 to 15 feet high having a shape similar to that of a large bell.  According to Cook, this device ostensibly contained two counter-rotating cylinders which would be “filled with a mercury-like substance, violet in color.  This metallic liquid was code-named “Xerum 525” and was otherwise cautiously “stored in a tall thin thermos flask a meter high encased in lead”.  Additional substances said to be employed in the experiments, referred to as Leichtmetall (light metal), “included thorium and beryllium peroxides”.  Cook describes Die Glocke as emitting strong radiation when activated, an effect that supposedly led to the death of several unnamed scientists and various plant and animal test subjects.  Based upon certain external indications, Witkowski speculates that the ruins of a metal framework in the vicinity of the Wenceslas mine (aesthetically dubbed “The Henge”) may have once served as test rig for an experiment in “anti-gravity propulsion” generated with Die Glocke; others, however, dismiss the derelict structure as simply being a conventional industrial cooling tower.

To anyone familiar with my work, you already know that I have a penchant for physics, cosmology and time travel, and I would like to put forth a theory of my own.If we allow our speculations to run wild, we can easily come up with any number of scenarios, from time travel, to manipulation of space-time, to antigravity and even to inter-dimensional travel.  Some German scientists have gone on record stating that the machine was designed to warp space-time and to allow the SS to travel backward through time, though since the majority of the world still speaks English, we can safely say that their plan didn’t work…or did it?

Dr. Brian Greene, author of The Fabric of the Cosmos, among others, has outlined a thought experiment, wherein one thinks of moments in time as slices of bread in a very long loaf.  Each slice corresponds to the slice behind it and before it, but none other.  If you walk along the loaf you can pluck out a slice from anywhere and that slice will be the present.  All of the slices before it represent the future and all of the slices behind it are the past.  This analogy specifies the direction of time’s arrow, and it is only the beginning of my theory.

Travelling forward along the loaf is easy enough, each day, each minute each second of our lives we are doing just that, moving forward through time.  Moving backward however, proves to be difficult.  The scientific barriers to backward time travel or retro-time travel notwithstanding there is a paradox which must first be overcome before anyone can change time’s arrow; it is the Grandfather Paradox.

The Grandfather Paradox says, quite simply, that one cannot travel into the past and kill one’s Grandfather.  The reason seems obvious enough, if the traveller kills his Grandfather, his Father will never be born. Hence the traveller will never be born in order to grow up, discover time travel and go back to kill his Grandfather.

The same paradox exists for nearly anything you could imagine doing in the past, any changes that might be made, which could have an impact on the life of the traveller, would serve to make retro-time travel an impossibility.

There are though, a few ways around this paradox, and they might just relate to the Nazi Bell after all.  First off, there is the idea that the past is unchangeable, so going back in time would have you living your life as you did originally during the time period in question, and were you to travel back beyond your own birth, you would cease to exist.  Second and more important if not poignant, there is the idea that travelling backward through time has you travelling to a parallel time, or in line with the loaf of bread analogy above, an alternate loaf.  You wouldn’t actually be travelling back to a previous slice of bread from the past; you would be travelling to a corresponding slice of bread in a different loaf.

If this were the case, any changes you made would then play out in an all new and distinct future, thus, if you murdered your grandfather in that time line, only the “you” who was indigenous to that timeline would suffer for it.

And this finally brings me back to the Nazi’s and their wunderwaffe, if one were to subscribe to the idea that the Nazi’s had succeeded in building a time machine, with the intent to travel backward in time, for the obvious peril of us all, one has first to consider the Grandfather Paradox.  Might it be possible that SS scientists succeeded, and were transported via Die Glocke to an alternate past, and in that parallel timeline are ruling over all mankind?

The above is really a discussion of the quantum physics theory called Many-Worlds, wherein every conceivable timeline exists parallel to our own.  It purports that every possible configuration of the universe exists and is equally as real as the one we inhabit.

So, did Nazi scientists develop and build a time machine?  Your guess is as good as mine, though, I have heard reports that several top SS Officers and scientists disappeared without a trace just prior to the end of the war…

“Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!” (Revelation 19:6)

“there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13)

“Human beings perceive through the senses, but there are limits to what the senses let us perceive and understand. But God’s senses are not limited like ours! His Spirit searches all things (1 Corinthians 2:10), and nothing is beyond God’s ability to perceive it. In this sense, He is omniscient. Nothing can escape His gaze and His knowledge. If it can be known, He knows it!”[1]

There we have it then, the Lord our God, Yaweh is both omnipotent and omniscient.  He knows all, or as Wallace Smith states above, “if it can be known, He knows it”.  He is also all powerful, and I suspect Smith may too have felt the urge to utter, ‘if it can be done, He can do it’.  But the argument is not finished here, not by a long shot, for the logical mind sees much.  Maybe not as much as He, but we still have our moments.

There are, shall we say, some problems that arise from the above assertion, namely that one cannot be both omnipotent and omniscient at the same time.  Below is a paraphrased argument proffered by such acclaimed scientists such as Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins:

The arbitrary suspension of one of more laws of physics, as is prescribed by virtually every Biblical Miracle, requires the progenitor of such an action to be, by definition, omnipotent – all powerful. Conversely, Biblical creator ideology demands that the same entity be omniscient –all knowing. These two concepts are in conflict and create an insurmountable paradox.

An entity that is omnipotent has both the will to do anything and the power to achieve whatever end. Not the least of which is the power to choose between one course of action and another.

An entity that is omniscient possesses complete knowledge of the universe, including knowledge of whatever actions the entity itself will take in the future.  This knowledge of future events rules out free will – the entity will already know what choices it will make in the future. The preordained choices of the omnipotent-omniscient being cannot be changed otherwise they will not have been preordained.

Though an all powerful entity –omnipotent- has the ability to do anything, including the ability to make a different choice, however, the will to make a different choice would already have been foreseen –or preordained- and therefore the resulting change would not have been a different choice from that foreseen.

The resulting paradox creates an infinite regress that cannot be overcome.  It seems our God is one or the other, not both…but which is it?  If one knows everything knowable, and has the power to do anything doable, then ones very nature is at odds with itself.

So let’s say, for arguments sake, that God is only omniscient.  He knows everything knowable, including what choices He will be faced with and what courses of action He will pursue in the future, including the effects of such action.  He can never make a wrong choice.  This would suggest that God is incapable of changing His own mind, that He is locked into the preordained fallout of a single act.  He is trapped within His own will and cannot take action to change things as he desires.

There is a solution to His problem, or is there?

If He were only omnipotent though, He could do anything; He could make worlds and cause men to walk on water.  He could part seas and turn infidels into pillars of salt.  So it would be the least of his ability to change his own mind, to undo a choice in favour of an alternative.  Yes, he would be capable of spontaneity and His will would be done.

But here’s the kicker, a being that is capable of spontaneity, to the magnitude of omnipotence, cannot also know the outcome of every choice, because those choices would then no longer be spontaneous.  The greater question here is thus, does God have free will?  Most would say “yes, of course!”  But on closer inspection, one finds that his own free will negates his omnipotence, and therefore the answer is no.

Our oldest and holiest teachings tell us that he is both omnipotent and omniscient, but logic tells us that this is impossible, such a being cannot exist.