Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime (Updated and Expanded)

Umbrellas, Spaghetti, and Spacetime 

Updated and Expanded version 2015

by Duane N. Burghard

©2015

The below essay is an updated and expanded version of what is, by far, the most popular piece I’ve written on my blog. I have been promising this update since the summer and I had originally planned to post it in November, but I felt it needed a final “once over” and I didn’t get to that until this weekend … so for those who have been waiting (and those who haven’t see it before), here is your mind-bending holiday gift for 2015.

How do space and time really work? How do they interact with our conscious minds? Why do we perceive the universe the way we do? Questions like these have always fascinated me, but I am especially fascinated by this one: why do some people seem to have as yet unexplainable oddities in their human experience as they relate to space and time? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I have spent no small amount of time thinking about them and looking for the answers and today, I'm going to share some thoughts on what I've found, what I think, and why.

I’m going to start by telling you some thing about me; I compulsively and (at least somewhat) involuntarily look for patterns in sets of data. It seems to literally be in my DNA. I catalog pretty much every input that goes into my brain and then, often subconsciously, I inter-relate it to other things and look for patterns. 

Here’s just one weird example of this tendency. Years ago, when I owned a small chain of retail stores, we were given a strong financial incentive by one of our product partners to attach a particular add on product to a main product of theirs. After several years of doing so, I began to notice that we seemed to have more failures attaching this extra product on Thursdays. At first I thought that I was simply imagining this relationship, but after a time I went into the software that we used to track our sales (which I wrote) and checked. It turned out that I was right. Thursdays were the worst day for selling this product. In fact, we were a staggering twenty percent less likely to attach this product on Thursdays. I checked all of our stores. The pattern held. I emailed other store owners in the industry, and while their numbers varied, the pattern held again. I contacted the product’s marketing director at the manufacturer and shared the data. A few weeks later he emailed me back and told me that he had done an increasing amount of research into my theory and had been shocked to discover that I had in fact identified a bizarre (and to this day unexplained) national trend. This was neither the first nor only time I have found a strange pattern like this simply through observation. Given the extraordinary number of inputs that I process (or that any of us processes) constantly, what made this particular set of inputs stand out?

Now hold that thought while I tell you about something I learned from Facebook. I discovered Facebook back in 2009 and, like many people my age (I am 50), I found it to be a great way to reunite with old friends. But as I reassembled my friends from elementary school in particular, I noticed a really interesting pattern (because, again, that’s what I do). In our early notes to one another, my friends and I often shared bits of things that we remembered about each other as children. What was interesting was that almost everyone remembered the same thing about me: my imagination. I agree that their recollections about me are accurate, I was and remain a pretty imaginative person, but the real question to me is why is that true, and is that characteristic (my imagination) somehow related to this weird tendency I have to find patterns in data, or is it something else entirely?

In order to explore the “something else entirely” option, I need to explain how I have come to see and understand the relationships between consciousness, space and time, and to do that I need to synthesize some pretty deep ideas. So, as incredible as this may sound, let's start by seeing if we can tackle the nature of consciousness, space and time in one paragraph.

When it comes to the nature of space and time and how and why we perceive it the way we do, my primary influence is a British astrophysicist from Cambridge named Julian Barbour. In 1999 Barbour wrote a book called The End of Time. Because my wife and Mother-In-Law were very well aware of my fascination with the subject, they bought Barbour’s book for me as a Christmas gift that year. The only down side to their decision (from their perspective) was then having to spend the next few days listening to me randomly exclaiming  "yes!" and "that's it!" as I sat and read it. Barbour argues that time doesn’t really exist at all. Time is essentially an illusion, a fictional construct of our consciousness. Fortunately, there is a relatively easy way to grasp this concept. Barbour argues that every single moment is a specific, single, contained reality, very much like a picture. We perceive “motion” (time) in the universe for the same reason we think we see motion when we watch television. When we watch TV or a movie, as most people know, what we’re really watching is a series of still photographs being flashed before our eyes at a very rapid pace (approximately 24-30 frames, or pictures, per second). Our brains take in all of those pictures and “stitch them together” creating the illusion that images move on the screen. Barbour argues that the universe is much the same way, and that our consciousness is traveling through these instantaneous moments and simply stitching the changes between them together and creating the illusion of motion and time. I believe that Barbour’s model is correct, but it’s also incomplete.

In order to effectively incorporate Barbour’s theory to my own, we need to add in some basic information about probability and multiverse theory. I am going to avoid getting distracted here and not take this opportunity to branch off into a detailed discussion of multiverse theory, however, if you want to get a grip on where I stand on the multiverse, I strongly recommend the article "Parallel Universes" by Max Tegmark in the May, 2003 issue of Scientific American. If you've done so, or if you just have a good understanding of the concepts, then you already know that, in a parallel universe, I've made the opposite decision at this point in the essay and I have gone ahead and taken a good deal of time to discuss multiverse theory, making this an even much longer essay ... so be grateful you're in this universe. The main point I want to make for the purposes of this essay is simply that all, or at least a sufficiently large set of different choices exist for each of us in each moment and that each of those choices can lead to a partially or entirely different set of choices in the next moment (or some later following moment), in the next parallel universe over (where you made a different choice than you did here … turning left instead of right leads to different choices for each “version” of you in the next moment, and so on). Now with respect to probability, I maintain that there are certain choices in each moment which, while technically possible, are so improbable that they don’t have a universe to represent them (this does not necessarily confine the total number of parallel universes to a finite number, however it probably does confine the number of parallel universes that each of us individually exists in to a finite (if also very VERY large) number.

So, to understand how I perceive the universe, think of the very first instant of your life as a drop of water falling down towards the very top of a single opened umbrella. Actually, it’s not just one drop and one umbrella, but LOTS of initial drops and umbrellas since the number of universes where you come to exist is probably quite large … however, I maintain that there is only ONE universe where this particularly unique version of you began, a singular set of “initial conditions.” In the next universe over where you also come to exist there is at least one difference in the initial conditions. That difference might be large (e.g. you could be a different sex) or it might be infinitesimally small … but let’s stick to the idea that the “you” who is in this hyper-specific universe started as one drop at the top of one umbrella. Each “moment event” is represented by the tip on the top of that umbrella and each spine on my metaphorical umbrella represents a choice you make or action you take (or don’t) … in any case the spines are potential paths that the drop of water (you) can take from that moment to the next. The number of spines (or paths or choices), is obviously variable based on the specifics of the moment in question, and again, some paths are more likely than others, so perhaps the umbrella is slightly tilted or misshapen in some way so that, more often than not, a drop would be more likely to go in one or several ways as opposed to one or several others). Now, I want you to envision the pathways from the tip top of the umbrella and along the spines like they are hollow strands of spaghetti (a tube), and once your drop of water (your consciousness) hits the top of the umbrella, you instantly “choose” and thus follow one of the strands along one of the spines of the umbrella (again, each spine representing a possible outcome for that moment event). The strand you follow is based on the choice made in that moment event. At the end of each spine of the umbrella, the spaghetti tube falls to the top of another umbrella (the next moment that proceeds from the path of the spine you followed based on your choice or action in the previous moment), and what we define as our lives is just an inconceivably hyper-specific trip down a very particular path of spaghetti tubes from one umbrella (moment) to the next … and, from the perspective of our individual consciousness, that’s what each individual universe in the multiverse is.

Basically what I'm saying is that our lives are akin to going down the tubes ... which should be easy for many of us to relate to.

Now here's where it gets a little weird (I know, only now?!). I believe that a very large number of the potential results of every moment event (particularly the probable ones) actually DO happen … which is to say that each of those potential paths does get followed (although obviously not in the same universe). Again, different choices in one moment can lead to a partially or entirely different set of choices in the next moment (or some later following moment) in the next universe over. Sometimes events may cause a “re-collision” of tubes (the same ultimate result with no other changes), other times they may get progressively farther apart. Additionally, different choices in one moment can lead to a different number of potential choices in the next moment in each of the parallel universes that the choice leads to (so umbrellas in the next level down would only coincidentally have the same number of spines).

My explanation so far would probably look like a rapidly expanding pyramid (or cone) of umbrellas proceeding downward from the moment of a person’s birth (well, the one “you” that we’re focused on … other versions of you (the ones with slightly or dramatically different initial conditions) have their own cone of umbrellas). But this cone would not have smooth edges, in fact it would only appear to be cone-like from a significant distance. The closer you got to the structure, the more “bumpy” looking it would be due to the variable nature of the number of choices at different moments. If you’re seeing it that way, you’re getting it so far. But the view we have so far only tells half of the story, and that’s because we are still humans, and thus, we all have an expiration date (or, according to me, we have lots and lots of expiration dates). What I mean by that statement is, as we proceed through life, many of us face a variety of NDEs or Near Death Experiences. I would argue that, by definition, for each moment where you have the possibility of dying, in at least one parallel universe, you actually do die and thus that tube/strand/path comes to an abrupt end. However, when you’re young, the number of options in the multiverse where you’re alive is expanding far more rapidly than it is contracting (put simply, you’re living through more versions of each given moment event than you’re not because there are simply that many more options where you live), thus your cone is getting bigger/wider. However, at some point in everyone’s multi-lives, there is a moment of maximum width, a maximum number of parallel “yous” that exist, after which, there are a decreasing total number of “yous” in existence until, somewhere, the very last you draws its last breath. So the most accurate way to visualize this representation of your life is not as an ever widening pyramid or cone, but rather as one that widens to a maximum width and then recedes again back to a single strand (picture two ice cream cones glued together at the opening … although again, technically the “shape” of the bottom of this structure is one I’ve suggested for easier visualization … which is to say that I’ve simply randomly decided that, as the number of universes where you’re still alive shrinks (as you age), visually speaking, the shape “centers” back to a midpoint … in actuality the bottom shape could look quite weird as the universe where you live the longest might extend downward from anywhere among the broadest point of the cone … although then again maybe not … perhaps the choices which are more likely to lead to your death push you out to the outer edges of the structure where the choices that lead to the longest life are “centered”).

If you're not confused yet, I'll help by adding another piece. My theory is that, for reasons I don't understand but accept based solely on perceived observation, the umbrellas (and more relevantly, the tubes of spaghetti) within this vast structure can twist and, as a result, the strands get intertwined in an occasionally quite messy way.

Which brings us to the really weird part. My theory is that the outside edges of the spaghetti tubes represent the borders of our conscious perception of our path/universe. It’s at this point that I start to rely more on observation than theory. It seems to me that, like many things in the universe, the “material” (or fabric) that the spaghetti strands (which contain our conscious perception) are made of is far from perfect. These imperfections do not allow the traveling drop of water that represents your consciousness to “leak” or escape but, at least for some of us, they do seem to allow us to occasionally see (with varying degrees of clarity and awareness) outside our “tube.” These cracks (or more accurately stretched out holes) may exist for everyone, but some of us clearly perceive them more readily than others. Given the nature of the universe as I already understand and accept it, it’s not difficult for me to imagine a universe where such imperfections exist (in my experience, the universe is hardly a perfect place).

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) the vast majority of the time, these holes don't allow our minds to perceive anything else (beyond our reality) because a given hole in our strand of spaghetti doesn't line up with anything other than the outer skin of one or several other strands of spaghetti (you don't see anything beyond the hole in your wall of consciousness because there's nothing to see but the outside surface of another wall/spaghetti strand). But every now and then, the holes line up, and every once in a great while they line up long enough for us to gain some perception of an alternate universe. Given the multiverse theory that I accept (which states that the very nearest parallel universe is no closer than 1 times 10 to the 10th to the 28th power meters away ... again, see Tegmark's article for the science behind this assertion) there are two possible ways that I could understand how information could be transferred between two strands. The first would be if the space between these holes were connected by wormholes that fold the vast distance in space between them. This seems unlikely to me because I can’t think of a reason why this would be the case (and yes, I’m very aware that I’m pretty out there already in terms of not having a “why” about much of what I’ve already written, but I would also note that cosmology is a science that doesn't answer the "why" question nearly as often or as well as many of us would like). The second possibility is, for whatever reason, more plausible and more likely to me; quantum entanglement. If we head over to Wikipedia, we find Quantum entanglement defined as, “a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently—instead, a quantum state may be given for the system as a whole.” It seems at least plausible to me that there might be enough particles in a given alternate universe version of our brain that are so similar that some level of entanglement exists and thus some amount of information sharing is possible (different subatomic structures of different versions of you might be sufficiently similar to allow for some kind of entanglement).

If my explanation is correct (or correct enough), the holes in a given person's spaghetti strand could occasionally line up with a variety of parallel worlds, some very similar and some pretty dis-similar. But the thing about spaghetti is that, once two strands are entangled, they often tend to stay that way, at least for a while. So, in theory, a person who is able to perceive these holes in the tubes that border our conscious perception of our universe would eventually get the chance to have multiple looks at the same parallel world. Imagine a parallel world, for example, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand is not assassinated and the July crisis of 1914 never happens (Princip either doesn't kill Ferdinand or is stopped). As a result, World War 1 either doesn't happen at all or plays out very differently. Without World War 1, Germany might not be punished to the degree that it was in our universe and, as a result, Adolph Hitler never becomes more than an agitated Austrian artist (meaning that World War 2 also doesn't happen or doesn't happen at all the same way). This doesn't mean that there aren't other conflicts and other results at all, but it does mean that such a parallel Earth would historically evolve quite differently. As many of you know, there is an entire genre of fiction literature that surrounds this concept called alternative history. I often wonder if the authors of alternative history books are actually making their stories up or if they've simply gained a small amount of awareness of and/or access to the world they write about. Suppose they just think that what they’re writing is merely their imagination but what’s actually happening is that they’re describing an actual parallel world, one that they’re not even consciously aware they have access to. Are my highly detailed dreams just a random compilations of inputs? Do I really have a great imagination, or am I “cheating”? Am I really simply reporting the results of occasional glimpses of other Earths?

I find the above theory a fascinating one, but I readily concede that it's just plain crazy to a lot of people, and there's not a lot of science to back it up, so let's ignore the holes in the strand thing for now (fair enough since most people obviously can't consciously see beyond the borders of their strand anyway … if they could then a lot more people would be talking and writing about this sort of thing and I’d seem a lot less crazy) and let's look at some of the truly bizarre oddities of life within our own individual strands.

So I am defining time as how we mentally interpret/explain the “travel” of our consciousness between moment event universes (my interpretation of Barbour), and I am doing that because that's at least plausibly consistent with our observation. But does the relationship between our conscious perception and the order of event universes have to be “chronological”? I doubt it. I am convinced (in no small part by my interpretation of Barbour’s theories) that all events are equally “real” and not happening “in order” but rather all happening at once (as I have often explained, your great grandmother is still very much alive, she’s just not alive here, she’s alive in all the moment events between her birth and death … to say that they are in the past is like the number 13 saying that the number 11 no longer exists). So each moment is as equally real and present as any other, they’re simply happening in different spaces (with time again simply being an artificial construct of our conscious mind that exists to keep us from the confusion that would ensue if we perceived everything happening at once or out of order). A number of modern physicists make a very effective argument for this explanation, and I recommend an episode from Season Two of “Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman” called "Does Time Really Exist?” for a much better explanation than I can give you (by the way, that episode also includes an interview with Julian Barbour). But if time isn’t real, if all events are equally real and happening in different spaces, then why does everything at least seem to happen in order? As noted above, I don't think it does. Obviously most of us perceive it that way most of the time, but it seems obvious to me that it's a “rule” that can be violated, maybe not at the Slaughterhouse Five level, but at least a little bit.

This past week (on December 22, 2015), I celebrated my 26th Wedding Anniversary with my wife. Because of our schedules that day, we had a private, celebratory lunch instead of our normal dinner. I arrived at the restaurant  (in a parking lot adjacent to the largest Mall in our city) a few minutes before her. As she and I met in the parking lot and walked towards the restaurant, I was suddenly overcome with the certainty that my possessions in my car were not safe. I told my wife that I would meet her in the restaurant and turned back towards my car. As I approached it (still several rows away), I saw a young man in a hooded sweatshirt walking along the row of cars that included mine. His head moved rapidly from side to side as he moved along the cars and it quickly became obvious to me that he was checking the trunks of each car to see if any were unlocked. My trunk was locked and my belongings were safe from this young man’s malicious intent, but the experience served as yet another example to me that some details of some events may “leak” through time.

Dean Radin, an engineer and faculty member at Sonoma State, did a somewhat controversial study a few years ago at the Institute for Noetic Science in which he attached skin conductors to individuals to measure their stress levels while showing them images, some emotionally charged, some not. The data from these experiments consistently showed that a statistically significant number of people began to biologically react to the emotionally charged images several seconds before they appeared. The implication of Radin's work is that at least some information is somehow “leaking” backwards in time. Many of us are familiar with the concept of intuition, and it seems rational to conclude that sometimes that sense is simply a random coincidence, but if time isn't real, then it makes perfect sense to me that some information about another event might find its way backward up my spaghetti strands, and we might perceive that information the way we hear the noise of something we're moving towards as we travel down a tube, like a train in the distance. Our inability to perceive it more clearly also makes sense since it is at a “distance” down the strand and, as a result, our conscious minds process the information as little more than a vague sensation that's rarely useful.

Somewhat similarly, Professor Darrell Bem at Cornell University did a study in which he asked subjects to choose between two curtains. In each case, one curtain had nothing behind it, and the other one had an image. Bem found there was no statistically significant difference in the choices made. But when he changed the experiment slightly and made one of the images in question erotic in nature, the results changed and a statistically significant number of people chose the curtain with the image more often. I should note that Bem's findings have been criticized by, among others, my former neighbor and good friend Jeff Rouder (who I've known for many years as our youngest daughters are best friends). Jeff is a nationally renowned Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Missouri who applied something called a Bayes Filter to Bem's data. Rouder asserts that the application of the Bayes filter eliminates the statistical variance. However, whether Radin and Bem are entirely correct or not is less relevant to me than the fact that these studies and others seem to clearly indicate that our minds are processing more information than we are fully consciously aware of, and the degree to which we are aware of the information we are receiving does seem to vary significantly from person to person. As a result, it does seem reasonable to me that what some people might consider to be paranormal (with respect to the perception of space and time at any rate) is more likely to be merely a minute genetic mutation of some kind (probably a subatomic glitch in our brain, basically a defect). Again, I sadly lack the training and funding needed to spend years of my life in search of the empirical proof I would need to grab a Nobel Prize for proving my theory, but I can say that, for many years prior to the end of 2013, I felt as though I was being constantly bombarded with the very specific subconscious suggestion that I should shut down one of my businesses by the end of that year. I did not listen to that “little voice,” and the results were devastating. Was my “little voice” actually a stream of information leaking backwards to me in a form I just couldn’t quite hear strongly enough to act on? I can’t prove it, but convincing me that these regular feelings are just a random coincidence would be extremely difficult.

For those whose minds are not yet reeling, I will leave you with one more possibility. It is also possible that nothing I've written above is relevant to our universe, and that's because it, and our perception of it, is entirely the result of a computer program. For those who didn't see the movie "The Thirteenth Floor" several years ago, the idea is that our universe is a super massive computer simulation and we are simply programs in it. And what about the laws of physics? Well, they’re just programming too. I have often wondered about this idea. As I have now publicly admitted to friends, I remember vividly waking up on the morning of October 17th, 2000, and hearing about the death of Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan. I had two unshakeable sensations that entire day; first, that there was something very wrong with the universe, that something (Carnahan's death) had happened that didn't actually (“really”) happen; and second, that even though I could remember the previous day and every day prior to it for almost the whole of the 35 plus years I had been alive, somehow that day seemed like it was the very first day of the entire universe. Perhaps I was right. Perhaps our universe is nothing more than a computer simulation that was written to play out a “what if” scenario by historians FAR into the future. It's possible, but if so, the good news is that we may not have to wait long to find out. I'm referring to the Holometer Experiment, a highly specific investigation that’s just started at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The Experiment will attempt to determine whether our perception of a three-dimensional universe is just an illusion. The possibility that our universe may be basically a computer program (or hologram) is a pretty well accepted theory, but to me, the real question is this; if our universe is merely a simulation and we do figure it out, will our knowledge of that fact “ruin” the game and end our universe?

Who knows ... after all, it could just be my imagination.

Defending America

by Duane N. Burghard
©2015

I was having lunch with a relatively new friend of mine today. She’s from a Pacific Island nation and spent most of her life in New Zealand and Australia before moving here to the United States about 11 years ago. Now right away I need to make a confession: immigrants impress the hell out of me. They make me think about my paternal great grandfather. Sadly, I never met the man, but I think of him often. About 110 years ago, he decided that he didn’t like what he saw going on in Europe (did he see World War 1 that far off? Who knows) … so he picked up his family (including my grandfather and great uncle) and moved thousands of miles away from his home in Germany, across an ocean, to a place he’d never been, a place where he didn’t even speak the language, and with nothing, he started over. If you don’t think that takes incredible courage, well, I disagree.

As the conversation went on, my friend got more comfortable sharing some of her experiences (both good and bad) here in the US, but it was clear that there was something else that she wasn’t saying. Finally, she felt comfortable sharing some of the questions and concerns she had about what she had been observing in our country lately (specifically our political discourse … or lack thereof), and she asked me what I thought. Today’s essay is largely what I said to her, but as I thought about it for the rest of the day, I realized that what I said to her included many things that I also what I want to say to everyone … so here it is.

First, I told her that I thought that all of her questions and concerns about America today were legitimate, and I further admitted that I shared many of them. I told her that, in fairness to us, it really didn’t used to be this way. I explained that, some time ago, a group of individuals came to power in Washington who believed (I think mistakenly) that government should be intentionally broken so that it literally can’t do anything, even the things that everyone agrees it should do. They accomplished their goals through an intentional, long term effort to manipulate a segment of the population (which, with the help of one sympathetic media corporation in particular, they did quite effectively). They glorified ignorance, vilified science and did everything they could to polarize as much of the population as possible (separate and divide … and once they’re divided, they’re easier to conquer). In short, they created a monster whose only ultimate use was the destruction of our Republic itself (which, and not to defend them in any way, I don’t actually think was their original intention … but when you seek power for its own sake and believe that the ends justify the means and you fail to begin with the end in mind … well, that’s what happens).

But then something odd happened: the monster broke free of its masters, and took on quite a life of its own. Elements of their own movement which they had once so effectively manipulated and controlled began acting unpredictably and, ultimately, uncontrollably.

My friend said to me, “aren’t you worried?” I told her that while I am watchful, attentive and certainly quite concerned, no, I’m not worried. And then I told her why.

I told her about a comedian I remembered from the mid-1980s. His name is Yakov Smirnoff, and he used to end his shows in that era with an observation that I have always really loved. He noted that you could go to Italy, but you’ll never be Italian. You can go to Russia, but you’ll never be Russian. And then with a smile he said that you can go to France, but you will never, ever be French. But you can come to America, and you can be an American.

We are a nation of immigrants, and in that rich diversity is our GREAT power. I grew up in Chicago. My Dad’s wholesale foods business was on North California Avenue, just a couple of blocks north of Devon Avenue. That section of Devon Avenue has frequently been highlighted as one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States (I promise you that the vast majority of you have never seen so many different languages in store windows in a 5 or 6 block section anywhere else in the country). I grew up watching Arabs and Jews, Greeks and Turks, Indians and Pakistanis, all with businesses right next to each other. Many of them were our customers, and they all interacted with each other in a peaceful, harmonious and productive way, every day. Do you know why? Because while they were still Jews, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Greeks, Turks and many other things, they were also something even more important: they were Americans.

Along the same lines, while it may disturb many of my friends to hear me say this, many of the people I disagree with on America’s radical right are correct about one thing: America IS a Christian nation. But it is also a Muslim nation, and a Jewish nation, and a Catholic nation, and a Protestant nation, and a Hindu nation, and a Buddhist nation AND an Atheist nation … and again, a BIG part of our greatness is in our ability to take all of those things and many more and pull them together into a unique whole that recognizes and respects everyone’s belief or non-belief. THAT is a big part of what makes us great.

Yes, there are politicians and media outlets that are literally selling fear, and an entire subculture of consumers who are buying that fear, but I refuse to believe that, when push comes to shove (and politically, and FAR too often actually, it is now), that we would choose to turn our backs on such a core principle of our nation. I believe that candidates for office who have nothing to offer but fear, who want to kick out immigrants, block others from coming, and worst yet force some to carry special identification to separate them … I believe that these ideas are so fundamentally far from the GREAT ideals of our nation, from the courageous and compassionate cry of

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

… people who preach against this message are SO far from who we are that, given the choice, we will NOT turn away from the values that are so central to our strength.

I still fundamentally believe in the nation that I wore a uniform for and swore an oath to support and defend, and I believe that we will find our way through this challenge. We can (and will) see through the fear salesmen and choose to “fear not”. We can (and will) choose liberty over a false sense of security. We can (and will) come to terms with the fact that we may not ever be 100% safe from another terrorist attack, but knowing that we can still choose to not “let the terrorists win” by giving up the very things that are so central to what makes America great. And more. We ARE capable of creating and maintaining a state that can effectively provide and work for the people AND peacefully co-exist side by side with a vibrant and productive private sector. We can simultaneously act sensibly towards our environment AND profitably towards our economy. We can rid ourselves of the cancer of fear and the leprosy of division and again be Americans FIRST.

But I’m also a pragmatist and I love spreadsheets and databases, and the good news is that, when I look at the numbers, I see these things already happening (and I see the demographics of younger and “minority” voters in particular pointing in this direction). I see positive change as inevitable. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but slowly, inevitably, inexorably, I see a better future coming.

It won’t be easy, of course, but nothing worth having ever is. I told my new friend that I hope she sticks around for it, because America needs her too.

Duane's Bible Stories: Who Touched Me?

by Duane N. Burghard
©2015

My wife pointed out to me this morning that, many years ago, when I would spend time studying the Bible (usually in preparation for a sermon), I would indulge my rather bizarre sense of humor by humorously enhancing some of the stories. She mentioned this while quoting one this morning and, since I have been in search of something to write about (and really don't want to write the things I'm thinking about either politics or the horrific events in San Bernardino this week), an example of this part of my warped brain seems appropriate for the day.

This story is from both the 5th Chapter of the book of Mark and the 8th Chapter of the book of Luke (the former is my preferred version and the one I will expound on below, though for the sake of accuracy I will note that it was the latter that my wife was talking about this morning). Jesus and his disciples are on a road trip across the country side and have just encountered Jairus, the head of a synagogue, who has requested that Jesus come to his house to see his dying daughter. We'll pick up the story there (Mark 5:25).

And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,

And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered , but rather grew worse,

When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.

For she said, If I may touch his clothes, I shall be whole.

And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

(and THIS is where Duane goes "off the reservation")

And the disciples looked one unto another and said, "Seriously?! Is he messing with us?"

And when the others were unwilling to speak, Peter (the impetuous) said, "Master, are you kidding? There's like ... thousands of people here all crowded up."

And when Jesus said nothing, Peter continued, "there's ... well there's a LOT of touching going on here. It's a crowd!"

And Peter, realizing that he wasn't getting it but also feeling a sense of urgency about getting the group going again, ran and stood on a nearby rock and shouted out to the multitude, "Umm, excuse me! Can I have your attention please? Listen, uhh, we're sorry to interrupt the trip here but we have kind of a situation. At some point, just a few minutes ago, umm, well, someone touched the Master ... and, well obviously there's a lot of people here and we don't know who it was and, well, it's ... apparently we need to know. So to make this go as quickly as possible, what we'd like to have everyone do right now is to number off one through twelve, and then gather in your groups according to your numbers, and we'll have one of the main disciples here join each group where we'll quickly interview each person, find out who the toucher was and, in theory, get this over with and then we can all get back on our way over to Jairus' house."

And Jesus facepalmed and quietly said unto himself, "seriously Dad, I have no idea how much longer I'm going to be able to do this."

And Peter, sensing that there was more, added, "also, I know that many of you are getting pretty hungry, and I just wanted to let you know that we're only about a chapter away from fish sandwiches for everyone so, if you'll just be patient a little longer, we'll take care of that too. So, thank you!"

And the woman, realizing that if the job was left to these men, they'd be here all day, raised her hand, stepped forward, explained, apologized, and begged forgiveness.

And Jesus, knowing that she misunderstood, smiled at her and said, "no, it's totally cool, I just wanted to meet you, that's all."

And Peter, still standing on the rock, rejoiced and said, "never mind! We're good!" And they continued on their journey.


Or, you know ... something like that .....