The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them.
“This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings.” – Jimmy Carter
(Click on the image for a larger view)
(Click on the image for a larger view)
“In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary arithmetic is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0,70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record – about an hour.
“The information in the upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how pictures are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of a picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to
ordinary television (in which the picture is a series of horizontal lines). Picture lines 1, 2 and 3 are noted in binary numbers, and the duration of one of the “picture lines,” about 8 milliseconds, is noted. The drawing immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered “interlace” to give the correct picture rendition. Immediately below this is a drawing of an entire picture raster, showing that there are 512 vertical lines in a complete picture. Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on the record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to insure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction.
“The drawing in the lower left-hand corner of the cover is the pulsar map previously sent as part of the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11. It shows the location of the solar system with respect to 14 pulsars, whose precise periods are given. The drawing containing two circles in the lower right-hand corner is a drawing of the hydrogen atom in its two lowest states, with a connecting line and digit 1 to indicate that the time interval associated with the transition from one state to the other is to be used as the fundamental time scale, both for
the time given on the cover and in the decoded pictures.
“Electroplated onto the record’s cover is an ultra-pure source of uranium-238 with a radioactivity of about 0.00026 microcuries. The steady decay of the uranium source into its daughter isotopes makes it a kind of radioactive clock. Half of the uranium-238 will decay in 4.51 billion years. Thus, by examining this two-centimeter diameter area on the record plate and measuring the amount of daughter elements to the remaining uranium-238, an extraterrestrial recipient of the Voyager spacecraft could calculate the time elapsed since a spot of uranium was placed aboard the spacecraft. This should be a check on the epoch of launch, which is also described by the pulsar map on the record cover.”
Ray Bradbury, infamous sci-fi writer has died at age 91. His best known science fiction works include “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Dandelion Wine” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, as well as, more than 600 short stories.
“I’m not a science fiction writer,” he was frequently quoted as saying. “I’ve written only one book of science fiction [“Fahrenheit 451”]. All the others are fantasy. Fantasies are things that can’t happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.”
Lance Sharkey, then General-Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia, was charged that, in March 1949 he: uttered the following seditious words: “If Soviet …
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Occupy Wall Street may want to wake-up and take notice of how to effectively protest and change corporate misbehavior. The bloody limey are taking over the pay of top executives.
Mining company Xstrata, hedge fund Man Group, banks Credit Suisse, UBS and Barclays have had significant *NO* votes on remuneration packages. Today, they ousted the CEO of Aviva.
The London Dow Jones office reports, “Aviva became the fourth FTSE 100 company ever to have its remuneration report rejected, and Tuesday the British insurance group said that Chief Executive Moss, whose GBP2.69 million pay packet was also rejected in the non-binding vote, would stand down with immediate effect.”
It is my understanding that you have stolen my Intellectual Property Rights, as well as, a host of other crimes. I can prove that you have stolen my property… and, I want my money back. More importantly, I have many friends. You have stolen from them, too.
In the process of your theft, you committed many other even more serious crimes having to do with basic human rights, the Constitution of the United States of America (including the Bill Of Rights) and a multitude of specific local criminal activity.
Not only do we want our money back, we insist on additional restitution and time in jail.
Please turn yourself in.
Thank you,
Victim
PS Are your evil ways why you, and your friends, spend so much of our money on private protection and security… while you are violating ours?
About The Need For Security.
This is a reference to the Mayor of New York’s Bloomsberg report pointing out the most stockholder money being spent on personal security. The only person mentioned spending more:
I suggested that there should be little (to no) taxes.
You responded:
How does any of this function
without taxation…?
I would like to know your thinking on this…
it doesn’t seem to be working now
and sure doesn’t favor poor to middle class…
but I think this is too long to write?
I respond:
There are a few ways one can look upon it. Here are two of the shorter versions –
1) Evolution
In the beginning there was Adam and Lilith. There were no taxes. For more generations than I can count, the world got along fine without taxes. In fact, humans prospered in the Garden Of Edan without taxation until we evolved into corrupt beings.
2) Exploitation And Corruption
An economic evaluation of taxation reveals a costs and benefits shutout. That is to say, there are no known benefits to taxation. On the other hand, there are at least a trillion costs to taxing (see the National Deficit for a an exhaustive list.) A small sampling includes…
The cost of taxing productive people
The cost of corruption inherent in collecting money
The cost of additional bureaucracy
The cost of removing the efficiency inherent in the competition of the free market place
You may want to think of it this way… every adult in the USA owes about $42,614.99 just for the Iraq War. (And, that is if we pay off the debt today. Oh, yeah. The cost of life and limb is not included.)
Next time, in order to be fair to everyone… maybe we should be required to pay the tax in advance… instead of 1% of the population footing 40% of the bill?
Do you know why Christians do not like the abbreviation of xmas for Christmas?
It is because the x is short for the cross, and Christmas is not suppose to be about Easter. That is to say, it is offensive to mock the birth with the symbol of his murder.
Suggestion: test your minister, pastor and/or reverend on Christmas Day… ask him/her their position on the use of X-mas.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Philadelphia, PA
by Daniel Brouse
Are there any parallels between the creation of Pennsylvania, the American Revolutionary War and the Occupy Wall Street Movement? Yes. It is quite interesting how the Quakers have been involved in all three movements.
As a Quaker in England, William Penn had been arrested six times for speaking out. In 1681, William requested a charter to start an American Colony for a “Holy Experiment”. In honor of William’s father, the King granted the land known as the Forests of Penn — Pennsylvania.
“William Penn was the first great hero of American liberty. During the late seventeenth century, when Protestants persecuted Catholics, Catholics persecuted Protestants, and both persecuted Quakers and Jews, Penn established an American sanctuary which protected freedom of conscience. Almost everywhere else, colonists stole land from the Indians, but Penn traveled unarmed among the Indians and negotiated peaceful purchases. He insisted that women deserved equal rights with men. He gave Pennsylvania a written constitution which limited the power of government, provided a humane penal code, and guaranteed many fundamental liberties.” — The Quakers’ The Freeman
The Quakers also played an important role in the Revolutionary War.
Among the pro-Revolutionary Friends was a group of 200 Free Quakers, who claimed to be “free of the ecclesiastical tyranny of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,” the governing body of Pennsylvania Quakerdom. The Free Quakers charged the yearly meeting with abandoning the liberty of conscience – the cornerstone of William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” in government and his motive for resettling Europe’s religiously-persecuted peoples in his American colony – and elevating pacifism, a secondary testimony, as the defining principle of Quakerism and a prerequisite for membership in the Society of Friends.
The Quakers of Plymouth Meeting in old Philadelphia County, now Montgomery County, were careful to abide by the discipline of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and thus tried to avoid any involvement with either army during the Revolutionary War. Their meetinghouse, however, was strategically located along Germantown Pike between Philadelphia and Gen. George Washington’s headquarters at Whitemarsh. During the early winter of 1777, when Washington decided to relocate his forces at Valley Forge, the Plymouth Friends’ meetinghouse served as a hospital and campsite for the Continental Army en route to their winter encampment near the Chester County village. — State Of Pennsylvania Historical Markers
Principles
Occupy Philadelphia has founding principles similar to William Penn’s stand on Freedom Of Speech, and his commitment to non-violence. To date, dozens of Occupy protesters have been arrested for speaking out during peaceful demonstrations.
Location
The Friends Meeting House at 15th and Cherry Streets finds itself in a strategic location for the Occupy Philadelphia movement. Due to the proximity of the the Friends Center to the Occupy encampment at Dilworth Plaza, City Hall, Philadelphia, the Friends furnished facilities to cook 1500 meals per day, provide medical treatment and hold meetings. After the forcible eviction of the non-violent protesters from Dilworth Plaza, the Friends continue to offer their hospitality.
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