It sort reminds me of Persona 3's scenario whenever Nyx, the maternal being, was supposed to come and bring about "The Fall". What's funny though was that Nyx would not have originally even come were it not for humans to summon her in the first place. Through wishes of death, through desires of destruction and the lack of motivation to take charge of one's own life, Nyx appeared and was about to bring about the fall had the S.E.E.S not intervened to stop them.

Though, that's just a game, I wonder who will truly bring about our deaths? Will it be people or will it be nature?

Supposedly the Mayans had predicted the world's end to be December 12th, 2012-- a time which scientists say that the sun will be directly in front of the Milky Way. This event supposedly takes place every 26,000 years or so...

If that's the case, why do people believe the end will come? I wonder, is it because they are afraid or is it because they truly wish for death? I'm sure the answers vary to person to person, but I feel as a whole, society wishes for its own death. They cry out to Death, weary and tired of their stifling nihilism so they wish to replace it with eternal slumber in hopes of seeking something better.

What fools humans can be at times... Spineless and weak. Society is not empty and isolated because it was born this way; it's because of recent activities that people have grown tired of their daily lives and wish to break the cycle so they use death as a means to escape their decadent lives. Death is no harbinger of paradise, it brings the ultimate end.

I look at those doomsday cults and simply shake my head of them. I think, "Why? Why would they do such foolish things?" If they have lives to squander away then they should be able to do something meaningful while at it. They should focus on those who suffer around them instead of being so damned self-centred and apathetic. That's why people are drying up from the saturation this nation is having to face.

It all makes sense too...

The people of this nation are becoming isolated, uncaring, nihilistic, materialistic, egocentric, and disillusioned from one another. No wonder no one is happy: no one can trust each other anymore. I can't say this is the leading cause of why Americans have one of the highest suicide ratings but it is a good indication.

A land of wealth and freedom all around and still so desolate.

The end is not coming, not yet; I refuse to believe it. I still have things I must do before any end is brought about-- not for just my sake but for the sake of others who wish to break free. I want to provide them the light of hope before the darkness of nihilism swallows them whole.

I won't wait for death. I'll live my life to the fullest and try to accomplish my goals. I won't give up till I do either. This is how I will live until I die and I will gather with me others-- those who are not lost in the depravities of nihilism and can find meaning in life. Together, we can change the world and make it a better place for all humans.

I want to talk a moment about the creation of this blog. Let me begin by saying I am not claiming to be a prophet, holy man or psychic. I claim to have not supernatural intuition or fantastic wisdom, other than was is gifted to the common man. I am not a writer, or a poet. I am not classically trained in any field that  will assist in the understanding or interpretations of the Apocalypse,  Armageddon, or  Ragnarok.  These are the humble musings of a man with a passion in the End of Days. Every society has some form of concept of the end or a period of great change.  These are concepts that apply to men of every religion, and even of those dedicated to science.  I hope to explore the ideas of the Apocalypse, biblical or otherwise. I hope to build a network of fellow enthusiasts, so that the end can be discussed. Because I don't really see it as the end of all things, just the end of life as we know it. I will be open to discuss any topics of interest.

TZ

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet’s contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.

The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century A.D. In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.

How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.

Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.

Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.

A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone’s authenticity.

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.

When he read “Gabriel’s Revelation,” he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus’ day as an important explanation of that era’s messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

In Mr. Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was “hayeh,” or “live.” Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

Regarding Mr. Knohl’s thesis, Mr. Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. “There is one problem,” he said. “In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl’s tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words.”

Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, “Gabriel’s Revelation” and Mr. Knohl’s analysis deserved serious attention. “Here we have a real stone with a real text,” he said. “This is truly significant.”

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.

“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”

The article is reported by Ethan Brunner. The title of the article is "Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection." Here's the link to the article at the NY Times website:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/middleeast/06stone.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

En caso de un ataque de zombies, ¿Qué posibilidades tiene de sobrevivir?

Acá tienen el link: http://www.oneplusyou.com/bb/zombie

En mi caso estas son mis chances de sobrevivir....

67%

Created by OnePlusYou

En el momento en que terminan el test tienen la posibilidad de colgar el resultado en cualquier web a través del código HTML (como por ejemplo en los comentarios a este post), desde ya, me gustaría ver cuales son sus posibilidades, para ver si arreglamos algo para cuando venga el Apocalipsis Zombie.

"The outlook has darkened dramatically"

Another article in the paper that's straight out of World Without Oil: "Between surging oil prices, food inflation and a credit crunch that's depressed global growth, leaders from the Group of Eight face the gravest combination of economic woes in at least a decade when they meet next week. The outlook has darkened dramatically since last year's summit in Germany, when leaders declared the global economy was in 'good condition' and oil cost $70 a barrel - which seemed high at the time... 'Now you have a financial disorder where the epicenter is the U.S.,' said Robert Hormats, vice chairman at Goldman Sachs in New York. And fuel and food inflation 'are serious matters that affect large numbers of people.'"

"On oil, analysts are skeptical that the G-8 leaders - representing the United States, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Canada - will come up with much beyond urging major petroleum producers to boost output" – um, does it strike anyone else as naive to ask sane businesspeople to work harder and invest more money so as to undercut their own price for a commodity they only have a finite supply of? The reaction to these pleas, BTW, has pretty much been what any pusher says to his john. Photo by rednuht via Flickr.

Incidentally, I did not go hunting for this link. It was actually an advertisement that came up while I was reading my email!

This question is in response to a heated debate stirred by Asking the White Guys: Don't Try This at Home, a blog entry by DiversityInc Partner and Cofounder Luke Visconti.

Question:

While I want to agree with you that a company shouldn't have to allow employees to express (or live out) any and all values, I do think it's a problematic position.  Since it is the law that companies may not discriminate based on race (among other things), then wouldn't this essentially mean that you should be unemployable if you hold racist views? And if it becomes illegal to discriminate against homosexuals, then, if personal beliefs are grounds for firing, wouldn't that make many evangelical Christians unemployable as well? While I don't personally feel that people should discriminate in hiring based on either race or sexual orientation, to then say that other employees should be fired if they hold personal beliefs that discriminate against one of these groups does seem to be less than open-minded. It's just closed-minded in a different way. Obviously if people can't get along in the workplace, then someone has to be fired. But if they can function appropriately at work, then I'm uncomfortable with the idea that they should be let go based on private values. I'd prefer to live in a country where nobody was racist or homophobic, but who gets to make the list of values which someone can be fired for not holding? Who gets to decide what diverse beliefs are healthy to have in the mix and which should be banned? While on any given example I'm sympathetic (yes, it probably creates a hostile work environment for your coworker to, on personal time, post a YouTube video bashing Jews, and so perhaps a company should consider letting them go) but the ramifications as they play out are very definitely complicated if you genuinely value diversity and freedom of speech. 

Answer:

This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Tolerating bigots doesn't just create a hostile work environment; it creates a hostile customer environment also.

When assessing workplace behavior, however, it's important to separate normal human behavior from bigotry. We are psychologically predisposed to trust people who look like ourselves. That's because we are tribal animals and our dominant sense is vision. (Discredited Freudianism and Darwinism strikes again! Why do people hold onto discredited theories? Because even something discredited is better for them than the Biblical worldview that they hate!)

This is why the core of successful diversity management is breaking down those walls with training, mentoring and communications. Education, however, must be backed up by accountability because good intentions or serendipity will not overcome tribalism. (This fellow supports anti - Christ brainwashing techniques, as well as using fear and economic pressure techniques.)

Treating people equitably by race/culture, gender, orientation, disability, age, religion, etc., is a value, just like adhering to accounting principles or the law. (Mistreating homosexuals is a sin according to the Bible, a failure to love your neighbor as you do yourself. But this person is not talking about mistreating homosexuals, but rather feeling that homosexuality is a sin!)

It is up to the leadership of the company to establish the values of the firm. (And they will be getting advice from guys like you precisely because they want to avoid expensive and embarrassing lawsuits.) To be clear: Not only does the employer "get to decide" (what behavior is acceptable), it is corporate leadership's absolute responsibility to decide. This is essential; a lack of values (and/or communicated values) destroys shareholder value.

Poor values lead to poor ethical practices. The subprime fiasco we're going through now is a direct result of sloppy ethics. At the heart of this crisis are hundreds of thousands of financially illiterate or less-literate people who were victims of predatory and unscrupulous mortgage brokers. A lack of regulation--and most importantly, a market for the resulting unethical mortgage paper--created this mess. It is important to note that Blacks and Latinos were disproportionately sold unethically inappropriate mortgages, and this was widely reported (by us and others) as it happened. (Note the ever popular linking homosexuality to being black lie.)

On the other hand, the best example of clearly stated values and behavior guidelines is Johnson & Johnson's credo. It easily fits on one page of paper and can be used as a concise decision-making matrix. To understand how this works in action, read about how they handled the 1982 Tylenol incident, (which is easily the best example of corporate crisis handling that I know of).

Unfortunately, people often get unfocused when it comes to values in how we treat other people. This shouldn't be the case. If a company's leadership decides that diversity management is instrumental for their company, they must be as efficient in rooting out people who won't adhere to this policy as they would be about dismissing people who don't care to follow proper accounting procedure or the law. (And after companies start rooting out and firing Christians, the government will start rooting out and jailing them. It is all about having good values. Ah, a victory of a civil rights movement led by communists, Marxists, atheists, subversives, and false preachers.)

To use your example, in my opinion, a person who posts a hate video on YouTube should be fired on the spot. (So were this fellow ever to find MY Youtube account ... and of course stuff like this will intimidate Christians from sharing the true gospel on the Internet or anything else. But hey, persecution always separates the true Christians from the false ones, the offenders from the pretenders. But of course, the person who puts an "I hate white people" or "I hate Christians" tape on Youtube would never be fired, and this guy would defend it!) Because we have constitutional freedom of speech, they cannot be arrested. (Not yet anyway. But you are working on that right now! Your own diversity program is based on what has become standard on most university campuses since the 1980s, the notion that "offensive speech" is not constitutionally protected; it is the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. And yes, Opus Dei Clarence Thomas led the Supreme Court into endorsing this notion by making cross - burning a federal crime. Of course, Thomas would LOVE to declare anyone who speaks against his Roman Catholic Church a federal criminal. I wonder if Thomas knows - or cares - that the people who put him on the bench to make that decision knowing that folks would accept from a conservative black man what they would never accept from a liberal black man or a white person of any race will be used in a much broader fashion than he desires? Incidentally, Clarence Thomas ALWAYS rules against free speech!) However, a person who obliviously expresses a stereotype (i.e. "Gay people are disproportionately wealthy") is demonstrating that they need training. (Never mind the statistics that do in fact show that homosexuals are disproportionately wealthy and well educated.) Since we all come to the table with misconceptions, the company is obligated to train employees if they want to achieve a work environment where good people treat each other (and customers) with a sense of equity. (Will your training program go after people who believe that anyone who rejects evolution should be locked up, a position by Charles Dawkins? Or that Christianity is dangerous and should be outlawed? Of course not.)

Don't worry about the haters who are fired; they'll find someplace to work. (Not if everyone reads and applies your column!) Most companies have no effective diversity management and don't recognize the damage that can be done by a cadre of bigots.

The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^® list is a list of companies that have superior clarity on this particular value (treating human beings with equity). I think it's important to understand that those companies will be better employers and suppliers. Clarity on values is a cornerstone of sustainable business.

More Ask the White Guy >>

This is just more evidence that religious right Christians that have been duped into putting their trust in democracy and capitalism are fattening frogs for the anti - Christ snake. It is true that while this nonsense was hatched on our liberal universities, corporations that the religious right has been telling Christians is their rock and their strength and their refuge in a time of trouble are adopting it. Why? Not because "it is good for business" - although they would do so if it was! - but because corporations are of the world and reflect the same fallen mind state as universities, liberal political groups, and anything else. This whole flag waving capitalism thumping religious right agenda is all about fooling and duping Christians into sanctifying the secular, and taking the worldly for being holy. When big business, the military, the state, and even many churches start training their eyes on Christians, it will be the religious right (and the religious left) that helped make it popular.

The mainstream media is catching up to World Without Oil's vision for an oil-challenged future. Experts are "shuddering at the inflation-fueled chaos" and "foreseeing fundamental shifts in the way we work, where we live and how we spend our free time." "You'd have massive changes going on throughout the economy," said Robert Wescott, president of Keybridge Research. "Some activities are just plain going to be shut down." Push prices up fast enough, said Michael Woo, a Los Angeles Planning Commissioner, and "it would be the urban-planning equivalent of an earthquake." And S. David Freeman, president of the L.A. Board of Harbor Commissioners, said "The purchasing power of the American people would be kicked in the teeth so darned hard that they won't have the ability to buy much of anything." Do you remember the abandoned cars in WWO? Experts support this and offer a rough number: 10 million abandoned cars.

Read all about it in this LA Times article by Martin Zimmerman. Graphic from the article.

Rumors are going around that a polar reversal of the earth will occur in 2012, and the earth will be destroyed. Actually, a polar reversal for the earth is not known. A polar reversal for the sun is known.

Click here for more

I'm looking forward to the vacation itself, but the car ride I dread.  It's probably going to be about a 4 hour ride, and G. is too curious and energetic to sit still for long.  And, no, unlike every other child in this country she does not sleep much in the car.  She also does not have a portable DVD player - for reasons partially financial and partially philosophical.  Does my 1 1/2 year old really need to watch TV in the car?  There's so much wrong with that that I don't even know what to italicize.  But, still, I was mildly agitating for one because they are cheap and there is a small chance she'd actually be quiet and watch it, thus saving us the crying and whining and the blood pressure raising back of the throat whimpering she does when she's just had it with something.  So, who knows - we'll just have to grin and bear it and hope it goes well. 

I am trying not to pack a ton of stuff, but with two kids for two nights and three days including the aforementioned long car ride plus lake, pool, and beach swimming, I think we are going to need to rent a trailer to bring it all.  When I was packing for college my mother tried to put a box of tissues into my already overstuffed car and I tossed it out, saying, "Mom, they have tissues in Amherst."  Since then, "tissues in Amherst" has been my shorthand for "you're packing too much."  So I'm actively trying to have a tissues in Amherst experience here, but it's hard.  I'm way over anxious for everyday life, but I'm awesome in an emergency and would really be just the person to have around in an post-apocalyptic world.  Honestly.  I just read two post-apocalyptic novels back to back (The Road and Cell) so my prepare-for-the-end-of-the-world anxiety is extra high.  I was actually just brining a case of what I privately refer to as apocalypse water downstairs (water to drink in case of the, you know).  I put it in the basement next to a half case of dusty unused Mason jars.  I imagine some survivor breaking into my house and seeing them, thinking, "Mason jars - she must do some canning - there must be food around here somewhere!" and tearing the place up to find it.  Too bad for him or her.  I put bulk lentils and shit like that in those jars.  I have grand plans every year to can and the best intentions.  I honestly do.  But every year I don't.  There's the boiling of the jars and the little tongs you use to get them and - eh.  It's got a vaguely scientific vibe that deters me every time. 

So I will be off at the seashore for a few days, making sand castles and eating fried fish.  Yum.  I'll be back on sometime next week but in the meantime I leave you with news:

Jesse Helms has died.  I try to see the best in people - it's practically my job - but I never quite made it with him.  I'm not wishing everyone I see "Happy Jesses Helms Is Dead Day" but I can't say I think the world is worse off for his loss.

Johnny Rotten actually talks some sense.  Perhaps the world really is ending...

I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
... Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
... Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
... And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
 [Bob Dylan : A Hard Rains a'gonna fall]

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. [Revelations 8:10, 11]

We cannot say how the wind blows. From whence, towards where, how strongly, how varied, bearing good or ill omen. The wind remains, even in this proud scientific age, a profound mystery.

And so it is that the fateful events of April 1986 have been blown into my ambit. I have been reminded of something that is part of the wallpaper of the 20th century, something I saw from afar, the implications of which I clearly did not grasp at the time. I am in the grip of this tale of horror, and feel compelled to make some sense of it.

To be sure, the events surrounding the explosion on the 26th April 1986 of Reactor Number 4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, Ukraine, have been exhaustively analysed, down to the second. Books have been written, which I have yet to read. I scan the facts, and they fascinate me. I've been doing more chemistry this week that I have done for 30 years. I see the pictures and they revolt me. But I want my words here to be few, and my response if at all possible, succinct.

There are 2 points of view I have had the privilege of knowing. Firstly, the recent photoreportage of biker-journalist Elena Filatova. Her plain and yet highly lyrical English prose compliments her photographs perfectly.

And secondly, a short interview by author Svetlana Alexievich called "Voices from Chernobyl: Chronicle of the Future" .

As a planet we are experiencing a radical shift. Some offer names for this - the post industrial age, post modernity, and the like. Of course there are a torrent of reasons making up the chaotic fabric of this age. But it seems to me that the Chernobyl tragedy played a pivotal role in the collapse of the Soviet empire, and shift of global power which resulted in the current wave of globalisation, with all its anxiety, it’s unknowing, its ill effects, as well as its promise. Alexievich makes some sense of this:

"We cannot read the sign of Chernobyl - it's a foreign text. None of the great writers has dealt with this subject, nor has any philosopher. Chernobyl lies beyond the boundaries of culture."

Key to this, she points out that rather that an event in the recent past, its effects are yet to be seen.

"Chernobyl changed space, Even a country that doesn't build reactors will be hit by the fallout from another country... Chernobyl also changed time. Radionuclides take hundreds of thousands of years to degrade. This is too much for the human imagination. Chernobyl has only just begun."

This shift from a well understood view on space and time, is profound.

Everyone deals with this sea change in different ways. For me, as one informed by scripture and faith, it places us in a particular mode of unknowing, not dissimilar to Abraham leaving all he knew on a hunch, the Israelites leaving Egypt on a promise, or of Jesus saying "nevertheless not my will but your be done", and descending into the hiddenness of Sheol.

Maybe the size of the scope of the problem could help us to transcend the merely human response. Surely faith is about accepting that which lies beyond our event horizon. It is to quote the book of Hebrews,  "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

"What good are our helicopters here? An entire culture collapsed, the familiar culture of war... the worms had bored a meter and a half down into the earth. Nature had obviously received signals."

And

"We are changing - from a civilisation of fear to a civilisation of catastrophes. Progress has become dangerous, for both humankind and nature."

Svetlana Alexievich's observation shows us how our myth of progress has suffered a mighty judgement. The illusion that we can dominate or control the natural process of life. The materialistic belief that life is about conquest, and mere survival. Are we learning?

Surely a new sense of being, a new spirituality is called for. One which throws off these delusions, and honours the creation as something holy, not a resource to be used. This is not a mere issue of ecology, a "green" issue. It is a fundamental challenge of the heart.

It's immensely fascinating how "accurate" a representation of the Chernobyl event, is the Revelation text. According to Wikipedia the Ukrainian word Chernobyl means "black grass" and refers to the weed mugwort, also known as wormwood. The star falling from the sky, the bitter waters, are powerful and poetic representations of radioactive fallout.

But to reduce the event to the idea of "prophecy foretold" and a Nostrodamusised response of awe at that we can do nothing about, misses the point. In fact, prophecy is mostly about a personal challenge to change, rather than a piece of cosmic cinema which we watch, as detached and spellbound audiences, rather than active participants.

Elena Filatova, although not a theist, has this to say bout the temptations of Jesus:

"Jesus rejects them all, but mankind is too weak. Science knows how to turn uranium stones into both weapons and bread. The people embraced the vision with unbridled enthusiasm, lured by the tricks of nuclear alchemy. Never mind the penalties of Time's usury and the violation of all natural principles, the people chased after those tainted miracles, marched with nukes in parades, and shouted - Hurrah!"

And perhaps displaying Ukrainian religious roots, she makes this point:

"Chernobyl is a vital icon for modern Christianity, and a bitter fountain of learning for us all."

Well the news was out today "Old Man Mc Cain" has aligned with a former Rove student, Steve Schmidt. It gives fuel to the fire that Obama started, saying that Mc Cain would give a 3rd term Bush presidency. Why does this matter to the artist? Well, it matters to all Americans which is why I am taking time to note this. If there is anyone out there who is hoping for a better future lets back up Obama.Theres lots to be worried about if Mc Cain gets in, besides policy problems he gives me and family other worries.

Old Man Mc Cain is not only ancient in age but out of touch with all of us under 50. I started wondering why would the youth vote in someone who has literally no stake in what happens 10 or 15 years from now? The Republicans apparently have a shell of a guy to hopefully keep one dog in the fight with. The unspoken thinking at the moment is how is such an old man going to be able to handle such stress? An older friend of mine, 75 years old and in relatively good health said to me, "Hey I am all for older people in leadership, but the most important position in the world?" "Thats got to be very demanding, I walk and jog still, but I sure as heck would not be able to handle that schedule!"  The older population around me is skeptical.

This election is going to be about the new. New visionaries, I liked General Clark's point of view. Essentially, just because you were an unsuccessful fighter pilot in Vietnam and survived being a prisoner does not make you presidential material. Does it give you experience and toughness in life? Sure. Does it give you credentials to lead a country? Who knows, probably not, its sort of just character credit.

I was flipping around online last night and I found the video in NY of a patient dying and being kicked to see if she was still alive. This is Healthcare system that Old Man Mc Cain wants to keep? Watch >