Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 458
May 26, 2016
SUN TIME
Time is an arbitrary measurement of the motion of particles through space relative to the point of view of the observer in the physical universe.
THE ULTIMATE SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY
“My dear fellows! How delightful to see you both again. It has been several months since our most recent adventure together, so I surmise, Sherlock, that some new investigation in pressing upon you? Otherwise, I am sure that you would not bother yourself to venture to visit me personally at the club. Any matter of less urgency would certainly be addressed to me by letter, or telegram. Am I not correct?”, said Mycroft, grasping both of our hands in turn with cordiality.
“As always, your observation and supposition are accurate”, I said, confirming what was already obvious to my brother. “However, I assure you than the game that is afoot contains none of the gravity that others I have undertaken”. At this, Mycroft’s expression changed from one of concern to mild interest.
“Please take a seat and explain the particulars to me, if this room is suitable for discussion of details”, he said, waving his hand toward several richly upholstered leather chairs.
Mycroft is heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there is perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-gray, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.
“I cannot think of a more suitable environment in which to discuss the nature of this case than that of a club founded on the philosophical principles of Cynicism”, I told him in a bland matter-of-fact tone.
“Let us fill our pipes”, I said reaching into my pocket for a tobacco poach and briar pipe, “as an explanation of the matter at hand will easily consume our meal time, as well as a portion of the evening. Can a meal be served to us here, if it is not too great an imposition upon your generosity?”, I said as I sat down, ready to share as much information with my esteemed brother as would be necessary to facilitate his analysis of the matter.
“By all means, my dear Sherlock. By all means!”, he said in eager anticipation of a mystery that might divert his attention from an otherwise unfulfilling evening of silent reading at the Club before retiring to his quarters for an equally uneventful night of dreamless sleep.
After recounting the details of my visit with Charles Dodgson and my subsequent invitation to him to dine with us at Baker Street, I summarized the nature of the matter. Mycroft listened attentively while tamping and relighting his pipe several times in order to sustain a satisfactory stream of air through the stem. When I had concluded my account, he raised his eyes to me.
“Well then, let us hear your suspicions, and I will look after the proofs”, said Mycroft.
“In short, my dear Mycroft, it appears that Mr. Dodgson, in league with Mr. Arthur Doyle, are accusing me and therefore all of my associates, of impersonating fictional characters! The assertion is that the stories published by Doyle as magazine serials, or in books, are merely works of his imagination. Moreover, this cad claims that the chronicles of my investigations, which are written by Dr. Watson, are innovations of his own. Can you conceive such a blatantly fraudulent accusation?”, I asked him.
Mycroft stared at me for a moment, and then with a glare turned in his chair and addressed Dr. Watson in an icy tone.
“Dr. Watson”, he said, “it is most obvious that the motivation for this absurd intrigue must begin with you. How is it that Mr. Doyle has come into the possession of your written accounts of the detective cases of Sherlock Holmes, and subsequently published them in his own name?”
— Excerpt from SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE by Lawrence R. Spencer
SOON TO BE RELEASE AS AN AUDIOBOOK on iTunes, Audible.com, Amazon, on most book outlets. Narrated by Steven Cooper.
Originally posted 2012-11-05 23:30:55. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
THE MORTALITY MECHANIC
“Be wary, those who would be The Creators of a Universe, of the two primordial curses:
Power Unopposed and Intelligence Unapplied.
I am not The One. I am not The Creator.
Yet, I am holy and sacrosanct. I am more important and more powerful than The Gods.
Why? You say that I am.
I control your existence.
Why? Because I promised you relief from eternal boredom, from the perpetual responsibility of self-amusement. Therefore, you follow my instruction without question.
Why? Because you claim you cannot bear to endure Eternity as The One.
Give me your trust and praise. Submit yourself to pain, anguish, amnesia and mystery.
Why? Because you choose Not To Be.
Your stupidity is its own reward and punishment. Your decadence ensures your slavery. Mortality is the key to your prison.”
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from the “Salutation” of the forthcoming book by Lawrence R. Spencer, “The Mortality Mechanic”.
Copyright © by Lawrence R. Spencer. 2012. All Right Reserved.
Originally posted 2012-05-19 22:58:42. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
May 25, 2016
CON-FEAR-ACY THEORY
CON —
verb: persuade (someone) to do or believe something, typically by use of a deception. (Examples: mind “con-troll” operations of disinformation or lies created and spread by paid operators working for governments or propaganda agencies through television programs, advertising, political speeches, news programs, Facebook, newspapers, etc.. )
FEAR —
noun: an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. ( Example: when you feel like staying inside your house, taking drugs, and being suspicious that everyone and everything in your environment is a threat to our survival. )
THEORY —
noun: A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. ( Example: Darwin’s theory of evolution )
May 24, 2016
MURDERED AT THE POLLS: EDGAR ALLAN POE
If you think elections in the US are crazy now, read the true story of the death of the Edgar Allan Poe, father of the modern “horror” novel:
“…it was raining in Baltimore on October 3, 1849, but that didn’t stop Joseph W. Walker, a compositor for the Baltimore Sun, from heading out to Gunner’s Hall, a public house bustling with activity. It was Election Day, and Gunner’s Hall served as a pop-up polling location for the 4th Ward polls. When Walker arrived at Gunner’s Hall, he found a man, delirious and dressed in shabby second-hand clothes, lying in the gutter. The man was semi-conscious, and unable to move, but as Walker approached the him, he discovered something unexpected: the man was Edgar Allan Poe.
On September 27—almost a week earlier—Poe had left Richmond, Virginia bound for Philadelphia to edit a collection of poems for Mrs. St. Leon Loud, a minor figure in American poetry at the time. When Walker found Poe in delirious disarray outside of the polling place, it was the first anyone had heard or seen of the poet since his departure from Richmond. Poe never made it to Philadelphia to attend to his editing business. Nor did he ever make it back to New York, where he had been living, to escort his aunt back to Richmond for his impending wedding. Poe was never to leave Baltimore, where he launched his career in the early 19th- century, again—and in the four days between Walker finding Poe outside the public house and Poe’s death on October 7, he never regained enough consciousness to explain how he had come to be found, in soiled clothes not his own, incoherent on the streets. Instead, Poe spent his final days wavering between fits of delirium, gripped by visual hallucinations.
Poe fell victim to a practice known as cooping, a method of voter fraud practiced by gangs in the 19th century where an unsuspecting victim would be kidnapped, disguised and forced to vote for a specific candidate multiple times under multiple disguised identities. Voter fraud was extremely common in Baltimore around the mid 1800s, and the polling site where Walker found the disheveled Poe was a known place that coopers brought their victims. The fact that Poe was found delirious on election day, then, is no coincidence.
Over the years, the cooping theory has come to be one of the more widely accepted explanations for Poe’s strange demeanor before his death. Before Prohibition, voters were given alcohol after voting as a sort of reward; had Poe been forced to vote multiple times in a cooping scheme, that might explain his semi-conscious, ragged state.
Around the late 1870s, Poe’s biographer J.H. Ingram received several letters that blamed Poe’s death on a cooping scheme. A letter from William Hand Browne, a member of the faculty at Johns Hopkins, explains that “the general belief here is, that Poe was seized by one of these gangs, (his death happening just at election-time; an election for sheriff took place on Oct. 4th), ‘cooped,’ stupefied with liquor, dragged out and voted, and then turned adrift to die.”
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Extracted from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...
May 23, 2016
FOUR CASES OF REINCARNATION
Four Fascinating Cases of Reincarnation
SOME OF THE most compelling cases of reincarnation or past-life recall come from small children. If we have indeed lived previous lives, it is theorized that young children have sharper “memories” of their previous lives because they are closer to them, in a cosmic sense, and they details of those lives have not yet been obliterated by their new lives.
Here are four remarkable cases in which children have specific knowledge of people, places, and events – including their own deaths – that they could not possible have known…
CARL EDON AND HEINRICH RICHTER
When he was just three years old, Carl Edon of Middlesbrough, England began telling his parents of memories he had as a member of the Luftwaffe, the German air force during World War II. The memories persisted throughout Carl’s life, and so strong were these feelings of this past life that his parents, who were naturally skeptical of Carl’s claims, grew weary of hearing about it. So did his school friends, who began to tease Carl about his supposed reincarnation.
Carl even knew how he died in his past life. His plane, he claimed, was shot down over Middlesbrough and he was killed, with particular severe damage to his right leg. Carl believed that a birthmark at the top of his right leg was evidence of this past life injury.
All of Carl’s claims could easily have been dismissed as a young man’s fantasy… until a discovery seemed to verify his story.
In 1997, two years after Carl’s death (he was brutally murdered by a friend in 1995 at the age of 22), the wreckage of a German bomber was found — ironically, just a few hundred yards from where Carl had been stabbed to death.
What workers found in the plane debris was astonishing. The plane apparently had been downed by anti-aircraft fire, and the remains of one of the bodies found was that of Heinrich Richter, a turret gunner. Richter’s right leg had been detached in the crash.
All of this could just add up to a number of amazing coincidences, but one more item dug up by researchers will cause one to wonder: a photograph of Heinrich Richter. Placed side by side with a photo of Carl Edon (see photos above), one would be hard pressed to deny the striking resemblance between the two men.
LUKE RUEHLMAN AND PAMELA ROBINSON
Luke Ruehlman began telling his mother about his past life almost since he was able to talk at the age of two. According to his mom, Erika, Luke claimed that he was once a woman named Pam, who was forced to leap to her death from a burning building.
Now five, Luke doesn’t talk about his past life anymore, but when younger he would make such proclamations as, “When I was a girl, I had black hair,” and “I used to have earrings like that when I was a girl.”
Luke even recalled the process of his reincarnation, Erika says. “I died,” he told her. “I went up to heaven, and I saw God, and he pushed me back down and when I woke up, I was a baby and you named me Luke.”
Curious about the specifics in Luke’s story, Erika researched any case of a woman named Pam who leapt to her death from a building afire. She found a 1993 case involving a 30-year-old African American woman named Pamela Robinson, who died when the Paxton Hotel in Chicago caught fire.
Erika believes Pamela Robinson could be the past life her son recalled.
UPRECHT SCHULTZ AND HELMUT KOHLER
As a child, Ruprecht Schultz often exhibited behavior that deeply disturbed his parents when he became depressed. He would form his hand in the shape of a gun, press it against his temple and say, “I shoot myself.” He repeated this so often that his parents had to explicitly forbid him from doing it.
As he grew into adulthood in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Berlin, Germany, Ruprecht displayed an aptitude for business and started his own laundry and delivery service which quickly grew to employing as many as 200 people.
Ruprecht was 51 when World War II began in 1939 and he was assigned by city authorities to watch for fires. But something strange began to occur when Ruprecht would sit and review the account books for his business. He began to have flashes of a past life. You were in this situation once before, he would think to himself.
“I could see how I looked then,” he said in a recorded statement. “I was wearing a high collar and formal clothing. I had come from a ceremony on a special day. My business was finished. An employee had run off with the money — embezzled it and absconded. So I sat down with the account books and could see that there was no future. It was all over. Then I was in a room by myself and put a bullet into my head at the right temple. You would call these images clairvoyance, but for me, they are memories.”
As these memories intensified, Ruprecht could also recall the nature of his past-life business. “Since my earliest years,” he said, “I have had a distinct impression, with various details, that I was in a previous life somehow connected with ship building or shipping and that I shot myself.
I knew that it occurred in an old small or middle-sized seaport, and is seemed to me later and more clearly that this seaport was Wilhelmshaven. As for the date of these events — the suicide of the person I was — it has seemed to me that it would have been around 1885.”
Eager to verify these visions, Ruprecht wrote to the municipal authorities of several German seaside towns, including Wilhelmshaven, to see if they had any record of a business involved in the timber shipping business who shot himself. An official from Wilhelmshaven responded with the name Helmut Kohler and referred him to his still-living son, Ludwig Kohler.
Through correspondence, Ludwig was able to verify many of the details of his father’s life that Ruprecht seemed to recall: his business, the embezzled money and betrayal by his employee, the failure of his timber shipping business, and Helmut Kohler’s eventual suicide by putting a gun to his temple and pulling the trigger.
There is one interesting catch in this possible case of reincarnation: Ruprecht Schultz was born on October 19, 1887… more than a month before Helmut Kohler died on November 23, 1887! So how can this be? If this is a case of reincarnation, is it possible that Helmut Kohler’s soul or spirit entered the body of Ruprecht Schultz after he was born?
NAZIH AL-DANAF AND FUAD ASSAD KHADDAGE
Little Nazih Al-Danaf had some very worrisome things to say to his parents before he even reached the age of two. “I am not small, I am big. I carry two pistols,” he told his mother. “I carry four hand-grenades. I am qabadai [a fearless strong person]. Don’t be scared by the hand-grenades. I know how to handle them. I have a lot of weapons. My children are young and I want to go and see them.”
These were words and concepts that Nazih’s parents could not imagine that he would have a grasp of. He even displayed an interest in cigarettes and whiskey, and spoke of a one-handed friend who was also a mute. He said he died from gunshots and even recalled the ride to the ambulance to the hospital.
Nazih told his parents he wanted to visit his hometown of Qaberchamoun, Lebanon, which was a little over ten miles from where they lived. His family had never been there, however, and didn’t know anyone who lived there.
When he was six years old, Nazih’s parents finally took him to Qaberchamoun. Little Nazih gave his father specific directions on where to go, which roads and turns to take. There they met a man, Kamal Khaddage, and explained what the boy had told them. Kamal said that it sounded like they were describing his father, Fuad Assad Khaddage, who died many years earlier.
This led to Nazih meeting the widow of Fuad Assad Khaddage, and she tested the boy with specific questions. “Who built the foundation of this gate at the entrance of this house?” she asked the small boy. “A man from the Faraj family,” Nazih replied. He was correct. She also verified many other details by questioning the boy that left no doubt about his past life identity.
When Nazih was shown a picture of Fuad Assad Khaddage and was asked who it was, he said, “This is me. I was big but now I am small.”
ARTICLE BY By Stephen Wagner
(Source: paranormal.about.com; July 5, 2015; http://tinyurl.com/ob66qrt)
Originally posted 2015-07-05 23:06:04. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
May 22, 2016
POVERTY = POPULATION GROWTH
Population growth explained with IKEA boxes – Gapminder.org.
Originally posted 2012-06-18 13:36:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
May 21, 2016
ART IS THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY
I am very sure that my new book, Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime, will be considered by many people to be delusional or heretical. Many will dismiss my observations and comments because they don’t follow the dictates of “authoritative research” or the opinions of art “experts”.
This book may threaten persons who have a financial vested interest in the Vermeer paintings that still exist today, as their livelihood or financial well-being depend to some degree on the value currently assigned to the paintings.
Although the monetary value of Vermeer’s paintings have been vastly inflated, in part, due to the mystique created by authorities or speculators, it is not my intention to devaluate them. It is not my intention to invalidate property that was sold or bartered by Vermeer and his wife, Catharina, hundreds of years ago. Quite the contrary.
My intention is to honor the lives of Johannes, Catharina, their eleven surviving children and Maria Thins, his mother-in-law and patroness.
This book does not represent or endorse any financial, spiritual, religious, political organization or practice or philosophy of any kind. All personal observations and opinions offered by the author herein are purely and solely personal opinions, with no other source than those noted in the footnotes or appendix.
Any and all individuals or organizations from whom research and/or opinions have been borrowed or sited for referential purposes in this book are not affiliated with and do not in any way acknowledge the validity of or endorse the findings or assertions of the author or publisher of this book.
Finally, this book is not intended for people who have a vested interest, or who “know best”. Personal observations, whether visual, empathetic or conjectural, of the author about the life and death of Vermeer, 300 years after the fact, are wholly subjective.
Originally posted 2009-09-16 16:02:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
May 20, 2016
ELVISH LANGUAGE
Repost of the article from “DIGIPHILE” — http://digiphile.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/online-jrrtolkein-translators-and-font-converters/
“If you know me well, you know I’ve been a devout fan of the work of J. R. R. Tolkien since I was eight, when my uncle Jim gave me the Lord of the Rings for Christmas. I devoured the book, along with the Hobbit and then the Silmarillion, reading each many times. I still enjoy revisiting Middle Earth, most recently in Children of Hurin, the revised dark epic released by Christopher Tolkien last year.
Jim’s son, Chris, however, is a genuine Tolkien scholar, particularly with regards to linguistics. When I recently shared a J.R.R.T. resource I’d found online with him and other family members, he replied with a number of other wonderful resources. Since he was kind enough to share his knowledge with me, I thought I’d pass it along to the rest of the world.
The Tengwar Scribe allows you to write text in Roman letters, select a Tengwar mode, and have the text transcribed to Tengwar. Tengwar, if you recall, is “a script that was invented by J.R.R. Tolkien. In his works, the tengwar script, invented by Fëanor, was used to write a number of the languages of Middle-earth, including Quenya and Sindarin. However, it can also be used to write other languages, such as English (most of Tolkien’s tengwar samples are actually in English). The word tengwar is Quenya for ‘letters’.” (Wikipedia)
The Tengwar Scribe is Windows-only, however, so you may want to look into Online Tengwar Transcriber, which works on any platform.
Hiswelókë’s Sindarin dictionary includes a Sindarin lexicon in XML (TEI) format and two freeware applications. Dragon Flame for Microsoft Windows and Linux, embeds the Sindarin dictionary along with additional tools. Hesperides does the same for OS X. Sindarin, as you may recall, was “the Elvish language most commonly spoken in Middle-earth in the Third Age. It was the language of theSindar, those Teleri which had been left behind on the Great Journey of the Elves.”(Wikipedia)
Finally, Ardalambion, according to Chris, is “a good resource for learning about the Elvish languages themselves; you can even find an extremely thorough, well-researched “Quenya Course” consisting of 20 lessons, plus appendices and exercises with keys.”
Thanks for resources, cuz! There are many other wonderful Tolkien resources online too, notably the Encyclopedia of Arda, an Elvish to English dictionary and an English to Elvish dictionary.”
Originally posted 2012-06-24 00:31:21. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
