Romantic love can generate many powerful feelings. It can provide a profound ecstasy, and a deep suffering when frustrated. To some people, romantic love is irrational. Romantic love can seem like an emotional storm.

This paper is really a collection of experiences, thoughts, readings, and the result of my discussions with people falling in and out of love. I began writing on this topic in 1989. I was first inspired to write “About Romantic Love” when I first read a book by Nathanial Brandon on the topic of romantic love. I revise or add something to this collection of thoughts several times a year. I am most inspired to write when I meet someone in love or someone feeling crushed when their love was lost.

I have had countless experiences talking to people who believe romantic is followed by disillusionment. These people come to believe that romantic love is a false hope. They began their relationship with romantic feelings. They had dreams for their future. They felt that life was finally rewarding and worthwhile. But eventually the relationship began to fall apart. It was a painful experience. They remember when they were in love. They feel tortured by their inability to see how or why their love was lost.

Despite these experiences, people are still drawn to something they seldom reach. It is a profound longing. A desire that is difficult to extinguish. Romantic love is not something that must crumble when faced with practical realities. Romantic love is not something just for youth.

Before going further, I should talk about the institution of marriage. One kind of marriage is the utilitarian marriage. In this type of marriage there is an absence of mutual involvement or passion. This type of marriage is usually held together by social, financial or family considerations. In a utilitarian marriage the relationship is made tolerable by long separations, community activities and usually infidelity.

The other kind of a marriage is the intrinsic marriage. In this type of marriage there is passionate emotional and sexual involvement. The experience of life is shared. The relationship is considered more fulfilling and interesting than any social activity. In this relationship there is a tendency to avoid activities resulting in separations.

Marriage itself does not create or sustain romantic love. To love someone, and for that love to endure, requires the ability to see that person with clarity. For example, we have all seen how some people will idealize or glamorize their partners. They exaggerate their good qualities, and they ignore and avoid considering significant differences and potential problems. Why do they do this? Many reasons, but mostly because they need to see the person in this idealized way.  People can fall in love with the idea of a person who doesn’t really exist and then hope the relationship will endure.

Most people never learn how to sustain a loving relationship. The reason is simple. Nobody showed them. The mere fact that a man and woman feel love toward each other does not guarantee they will be able to create a joyful and rewarding life. Love does not automatically teach a person communication skills. Love does not teach a person how to resolve a conflict. Love does not teach people how to weave their love into the rest of their life.

For most people who fall in love, a time will come when they sense the beginning of problems. They know that romantic love can produce great joy and happiness. But with time, they begin to feel more alone. They experience self-doubt and they feel the consequence of their unmet needs. They begin to see the other person more like they truly are and not what they needed them to be. They usually begin to find faults in others and they may become jealous, angry, bitter, sarcastic or cynical. Many will separate or remain together in misery. They will often have children and try to raise a family in an effort to revive the relationship or to feel better. Many will have an affair. When they separate or divorce, some will get involved in another relationship too quickly. They try to find some way to ease the pain. They idealize this new person in their life and the cycle starts over. They say to themselves, “I’ll never be hurt like that again.

The exact origin of the desire to love is difficult to comprehend, but can be appreciated in many ways.

When a man and woman encounter each other in midst of love they seek intimate contact. In a general sense, love is a response to something we intimately value. Romantic love is the experience of joy in the presence of a loved one, joy in being close to a loved one, and joy in our interaction with a loved one.

Someone we love enters the room. Our eyes and heart light up. We look at this person. We feel a growing feeling of joy within us. We reach out and touch their hand. We feel happy and fulfilled.

I believe we all have a profound need to find things in the world we care about and feel inspired by.

Life is worthwhile – at any age – when we find something worth pursuing.

Psychologists have long recognized that both children and adults need something in their environment that is a source of “pleasure.” Maybe pleasure is a not the best word, but we do have a need to explore those things which are interesting and exciting.  We search for that which will charm us and bring us in touch with the awe and wonder we experienced when we were children.  We know that children are curious and adventurous. But the most important need of children and adults seems to be the expression of their true nature — Being who we truly are is important. I first learned about who were are from my friend and mentor Sterling Ellsworth.  He called it our Real Self, our identity and our true nature.

Our Real Self and the nature of people is quit clear when we observe children. Any parent can readily see that children are inherently lovable and capable. And for children to grow into healthy adjusted adults, they need to be treated as lovable and capable beings. They also need to express their lovable and capable nature.

From the moment of birth we begin looking for lights that will brighten our journey, provide us with purpose and meaning, and make our struggle worthwhile.

It is here that we can begin to understand another important expression of romantic love.

Romantic love is a powerful way to express our capacity to love and to be loved. It is a way to focus our energy, our curiosity, and our desire for adventure. Romantic love is a source of pleasure and inspiration and is worth pursuing. Romantic love is a blessing of life. Romantic love confirms our lovable and capable nature.

At the very core of Romantic Love I have observed and discovered a number of important dynamics at work.

Visibility (the desire to be seen)

To live successfully is to put ourselves into the world; to give expression to our thoughts, our values, and our goals. Whenever we express our personality, we make known our values, our intelligence, our sense of life, our rhythm and temperament. Each of us express ourselves in our behavior – - how we act and what we say.  Whatever we express in our behavior can be reflected back by the response and the behavior expressed by others. We see how others respond if we are paying attention. The way they act, how they look at us, the way they speak to us, and especially the ways in which they don’t respond.

When we encounter a person who thinks as we do, and notices what we do, and values what we do, we experience a strong feeling of contact with that person.

In loving you, I see in you a part of me that is also you.. I also see in you something that is really  me. And there is you, a person of many qualities– a person who is a mystery– a person I am drawn to.

All life – by it’s very nature – entails a possibility of defeat. Because of this, we find pleasure and reassurance in the expression of life. Sharing our life and participating in life is reassuring that life is possible. Romantic love is an intense sharing and reassurance that life is possible.

So we find pleasure in the experience of life which endure. We take comfort in the experience of this. This comfort is a greater gift than any explicit words or advice: The sight of a lovable person. The awareness of a capable child. There is something in each of us that finds pleasure in watching the healthy assertiveness in a child make his way into the world. Finding ourselves romantically in love is always associated with a hope that it will endure.

Visibility and Self-Discovery

The agony of not being recognized or seen by others is a source of many problems and insecurities. When we are seen by others, there is always some element of self-discovery available to us. The first time we feel loved, there is an enormous pleasure and excitement in finding someone who sees and values us. A sustained experience of visibility in any relationship that goes to any significant depth will generate self-discovery and expanded awareness.

Visibility and Understanding

The desire to be seen and understood are inseparable. When we are told we are loved, there is something in us that feels joy. And there is something in us that wants to know what others see. The desire for visibility is related to our desire to be understood. For any individual, blind love may help numb or settle anxiety, but it will not answer our hunger to be seen and understood. People who feel misunderstood will often go to great lengths to be seen.

Being visible does not always lead to love. But love devoid of visibility is an illusion.

Visibility and Validation

People often confuse the desire to be validated with a desire to be seen. Visibility and validation are not the same.

We have all known people with low self-esteem. In every case there is an excessive preoccupation with gaining approval and avoiding disapproval. There is an excessive desire for validation and support. People naturally confuse the need to feel good about themselves (self-esteem) with a need to be seen (visibility). The desire to be validated is not healthy when it becomes more important than honesty, integrity, or any expression of our lovable and capable nature.

The desire to be validated is not a sign of low self-esteem. But people with good self-esteem do not run around acting super normal, hiding their faults, showing off, or trying to impress people just to be validated.  The more they take pride in who they are, and the more they act in a way that makes them proud, the more eager they are to be seen for who we are. Self-esteem means confidence in our capable nature, and it means confidence in a loveable identity.

We are not mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn. We are all inherently loveable and capable. We may not be treated that way. We may even come to believe we are not lovable and capable because of the way people treat us. All love endures between people who recognize their lovable and capable nature and that nature in the others.

When we feel lovable and capable we want others to see us as we truly are — not who we pretend to be. We look to see if they can see and communicate to us their discovery of who we really are. We want people to see and value the identity we were born with and what we have grown to become. We want people to see us and treat us as lovable and capable.

In romantic love, two people see each other in a unique way.. And they experience each other in a deeper and more complete way than any other relationship.

Visibility and Sexuality

We are more than human. We are beings of a specific gender. Contained in every human is the awareness of being male or female. It is an integral and intimate part of our self-concept and our identity. We are not merely human beings. We also experience ourselves as male and female. Our sexual identity is rooted in the reality of our biological nature. Our sexuality is not simply our physical maleness or femaleness. Our sexual identity is the experience of our maleness and our femaleness.

The polarity of male and female generates a dynamic tension. These differences can be complementary and provide a window into aspects of ourselves that were never known..

Our sexual identity is central to who we are. We not only want to be seen by others as a certain kind of human being. We want to be seen as a man or woman. Despite the many differences between men and women, we can compliment each other in many basic, mysterious and wonderful ways.

As far as I can tell, masculinity is the expression of man’s belief that the creation of a woman was natures most brilliant idea. And femininity is the expression of women’s belief that the creation of man is natures most brilliant idea.

We all carry some male and female aspects within us. In men, the male principle is usually predominate. In women, the female principle is usually predominate. A man knows what it feels like to be a man in a way that no woman can fully understand. The same principle applies for women. The difference in perspective available to men and women when encountering each other represents, at least potentially, a deeper range of knowing our self and another person. In other words, a wider range of possibilities exists between men and women than between members of the same sex. The deepest level of self-understanding for a man requires interaction with the opposite sex. In relating to people who are different, especially the opposite sex, we can potentially experience the fullest range of who we are, who we aren’t, and aspects of ourselves we deny or never realized. The polarity between man and woman generates and accentuates self-discovery and self-understanding.

We have all heard how some people can meet someone for the first time and then experience a sudden shock of recognition.  There is an odd sense of familiarity, a mysterious sense of having encountered the person before – as if the person was already known. These people experience a sense of fascination over this mysterious familiarity and strangeness.  Something is known about this person in a powerful way.

In romantic love we perceive the other as a real or potential source of happiness. Desire is born. And desire leads to actions which result in pleasure and joy. If we are frightened or angered by our differences, love withers.

Fascination, attraction, or passion may be born “at first sight”. But love requires curiosity, patience, acceptance and seeing people for who they truly are. This usually takes time.

Our Sense of Life and Romantic Love

A soul mate is a person who shares our sense of life. When we encounter another person, we encounter the presence of that person’s sense of life. Sometimes we can quickly sense something about the other person’s sense of life, how he or she feels about himself or herself, the joyfulness in their approach to life, or the defensiveness and fearfulness they endure. We can sense in people their level of enthusiasm, optimism, excitement or even their dread with life.

Our sense of life reflects many conscious and unconscious values. It reflects our broadest and deepest attitudes, and is grounded in our conclusions about the world, about life and about ourselves. When we are not allowed to express our lovable and capable nature, and when we are treated as unlovable and incapable beings, we develop a sense of life in which the world is not open to our thoughts, is unconcerned about our feelings, and unaffected by our actions.

Our sense of life can also reflect a strong and healthy self-esteem, a clear sense of value in our life, and a conviction that our world is open to our lovable and capable nature. Or it can reflect the torture of self-doubt, embittered resentment, tragic defiance, complaining resignation, aggressive impotence, a perverse sense of martyrdom, a view of the world that is sordid and senseless, or the anxiety that we may live in a world were we are unlovable and incapable.

There are potential problems whenever a couple have a different sense of life.  It is essential that people in love fully recognize, appreciate and accept differences in their sense of life.  Even when they don’t, things can still go well initially – - especially when people put their “best foot” forward.  Eventually the difference in your sense of life will surface with unexpected results.  People eventually stop pretending or begin to notice with time how you really are.

Our sense of life and our approach to life develops with the first expression of our Real Self.  It matters how our parents respond and it matter how other people treat us.  It matters if parents treat us as unlovable or incapable.  It matters if our parents treat each other as lovable and capable.   When people treat us like we are unlovable and incapable, and when they treat each other that way, life can become a grudging responsibility where people may become no more than objects or a means to an end, and new relationships are formed on the basis of social economics. We may begin to value ourselves not for who we are, but for how we look, what we can do and what we have or own. We may develop a sense of life where we shrink our awareness, blame others, give up their responsibilities, or we may come to believe that life is no longer an adventure in which every moment offers the opportunity to learn. When two people who respond to life in radically opposing ways meet, a potential barrier to romantic love may be formed.

Complementary Differences and Similarities

The second principle involves the “similarities and differences” between people. The most basic similarity is that a man and a woman are both are human. The most basic difference is that people are male or female.

In romantic love, a man and woman must experience their differences, at least to some degree, as mutually enriching, and as capable of drawing out untapped awareness and potential in each other. Their intimacy is an adventure resulting in expanded consciousness and the profound sense of being alive. The key is whether the couple experience their differences as complementary or antagonistic. This will depend on the willingness and ability of both people to appreciate and find value in the other person.

Romantic love offers us the possibility self-discovery through deep contact with another.

If you are in love, you might ask yourself, What part of myself does my lover bring me into fresh contact with? How do I experience myself in this relationship? When I am with my lover, what feels most alive within me?

Rhythm and Energy

Most people possess an inherent biological rhythm that is easy to feel but difficult to describe when you don’t know what to look for. This rhythm and energy is deeply connected to whether or not romantic love actually ignites or endures.

Rhythm and energy can be observed in our speech patterns, emotional responses and body language. Closely related is the observation that some people are naturally more or less energetic than others – -physically, emotionally or intellectually. Some people move, feel, think faster or slower depending on the circumstance and their environment. Some people are impulsive or impatient. They may even experience a different sense and relationship to time.

Sometimes two people meet and are on the verge of falling in love. They may have a lot in common and they may be physically attracted on the basis of their appearances.  Yet they can feel strangely out-of-sync with each other. They may even feel irritated and have difficulty accounting for these feelings. The person who is naturally fast and eagerly explore’s life may feel chronically impatient with a person who savors life at a slower pace. The person with a less fevered pace may feel chronically pressured.   The person who interprets these differences as personal or intentional by the other will feel frustrated and even angry in the relationship.

Failure to understand the importance of our rhythm and energy, and the effect on relationships, will lead to quarrels and disagreements.  These difference can become antagonistic even though they have the potential to become complimentary.   When couples don’t recognize or appreciate their differences, many will become extreme or try to change the other person in order to create a balance. When this fails couples begin to look for faults in each other. As the relationship begins to fail, they may begin to explain their problems in terms of the alleged faults. They remain unaware of a deeper reasons for their discomfort and acceptance of differences.

When a man and woman meet and feel “in sync”, there can be an exhilarating experience of harmony and that their relationship is right. Being “in sync” is an experience of knowing the other in a very special sense. Both may resonate to a marvelous kind of rhythm.

Once you are aware of this phenomena, and notice it in your relationships, you can better understand why people are attracted and irritated by each another. Rhythm and energy are the means to explore difference and similarities and to gain a deeper harmony and compatibility.

The Private Universe Of Romantic Love

Another essential principle to understanding romantic love is the concept of “A private universe.” Two people in love can create a private universe out of their sense of individuality, their similar sense of life, their differences and similarities, their rhythm and energy, and the capacity to make meaningful contact with each other. This universe can be shared with silent understandings, unspoken words, humorous signals, and focused glances.  Conversations and physical contact become wondrous, exciting and safe.

Romantic love is based on shared sight and is shaped by happiness. Immature love is based on shared blindness, and is merely a fortress against pain.

Romantic love is a sanctuary, and a source of nourishment and energy. Sometimes romantic love is the only point of certainty, and the only thing that is solid and real in the midst of chaos and ambiguity.

Ungkapkan keinginan dan mengapa menginginkannya?

Anda harus memiliki kejelasan tidak hanya tentang apa yang Anda ingin dari cinta, tetapi apa yang diinginkan dalam hidup dengan pasangan Anda. Segera setelah mengetahui itu, Anda akan yakin telah masuk dalam suatu hubungan dengan tujuan dan visi yang jelas seperti apa hubungan Anda dengan dia. Menentukan kriteria akan membantu terhindar dari kesulitan terlibat dengan seseorang yang tidak cocok bagi Anda.

Ukur romantisme Anda

Meskipun kedengarannya basi, buatlah daftar harapan pasangan ideal Anda. Isi dengan keinginan pasangan sempurna, istimewa tetapi realistis. Semakin banyak Anda tahu apa yang cocok bagi Anda, semakin mudah menangkap momen kapan dia bisa berjalan bersama Anda.

Cintai diri sendiri

Ada pepatah lama mengatakan: “Anda tidak akan bisa membahagiakan orang lain sampai Anda membahagiakan diri sendiri.” Hal ini tidak hanya akan membantu pada saat bertemu dengan seseorang yang baru tetapi juga membantu Anda memulai hubungan pada saat yang tepat.

Jadilah yang terbaik

Cinta bukan hanya sekedar mencari seseorang yang akan membuat Anda bahagia. Kecocokan akan menghasilkan yang terbaik- mungkin seseorang yang akan membuat Anda menjadi orang yang bahagia dan lebih produktif.

Cara terbaik untuk menemukan cinta sejati adalah pintar-pintarlah memilih seseorang dan jelas mengapa Anda memilihnya.

Pada proyek ini telah berhasil dibangun sebuah robot berbasis PDA yang dapat dikendalikan secara jarak jauh dengan komunikasi nirkabel.

Kata kunci : Robotika, PDA, Komunikasi nirkabel.

Robot PDA adalah aplikasi yang dibuat dari PDA. Dimana aplikasi ini memanfaatkan konektifitas yang terdapat dalam PDA seperti Wi-Fi, Bluetooth sebagai media pengendali wireless-nya. Selain itu digunakan juga sebagai “otak” pengganti komputer yang dapat menterjemahkan perintah yang di terima dari berbagai aplikasi pengontrolan dan koneksi. Dalam proyek ini disamakan untuk data yang diterima dari setiap kontrol adalah berupa karakter ASCII 2 untuk maju, 8 untuk mundur, 4 untuk kiri, 6 untuk kanan dan 5 untuk berhenti.

]]> http://bayuyudistira.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/robot-pda/feed/ 0 bayuyudistira http://bayuyudistira.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/global-warming-is-accelerating-faster-than-can-be-naturally-repaired/ http://bayuyudistira.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/global-warming-is-accelerating-faster-than-can-be-naturally-repaired/#comments Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:25:55 +0000 bayu http://bayuyudistira.wordpress.com/?p=70 ]]>

It appears the Earth’s climate has the ability to naturally regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Historic records extracted from ice cores show quantities of CO₂ have varied widely in the last hundreds of thousands of years. This evidence appears to support the global warming critics view that current observations of the human-induced greenhouse effect is actually naturally occurring and the effects of carbon on the climate is over-hyped.

However, a new study shows that although carbon dioxide levels may have been larger in the past, the Earth’s natural processes had time to react and counteract global warming. The current trend of industrial emissions has been far more accelerated than any historic natural process, natural climate “feedback loops” cannot catch up to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

More bad news about the outlook for our climate I’m afraid. It would appear that the carbon dioxide emissions we have been generating since the Industrial Revolution have increased too rapidly for the Earth’s natural defences to catch up. This new finding comes from the analysis of bubbles of air trapped in ancient ice in Antarctica, dated to 610,000 years ago.

Long before man started burning coal and oil products, the Earth would naturally generate its own carbon emissions. The main polluters were volcanic eruptions, sending millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Surely this had an effect on the state of the climate? Apparently so, but the increased levels of carbon dioxide produced by individual eruptions could be dealt with naturally over thousands of years. The climate wants to be in balance, should one quantity increase or decrease, other mechanisms are naturally triggered to bring the system back into equilibrium.

These mechanisms are known as “feedback loops”. Feedback loops are common in nature, should one quantity change, production of other quantities may speed up. In the case of the carbon emission from volcanic activity, levels of the stuff appear to have been controlled by a natural “negative feedback” loop (akin to a carbon thermostat, when carbon dioxide levels were too high, another process was triggered to remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). However, the sustained atmospheric input of industrial burning of carbon dioxide by human activity has dwarfed historic volcanic carbon output, overwhelming any natural negative feedback mechanism.

This new study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience and carried out co-author Richard Zeebe. In an interview at the University of Hawaii, Zeebe comments on the climate’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: “These feedbacks operate so slowly that they will not help us in terms of climate change […] that we’re going to see in the next several hundred years. Right now we have put the system entirely out of equilibrium.”

Zeebe and his team noticed that the levels of carbon dioxide and atmospheric temperature correlated, rising and falling together. “When the carbon dioxide was low, the temperature was low, and we had an ice age,” he said. His study states that in the last 600,000 years the carbon dioxide levels have fluctuated only by 22 parts per million. Since the 18th century, human activity has injected 100 parts per million. Humans have increased the quantity of carbon dioxide 14,000 times more than any natural process is capable of doing. This increase has negated any chance for the climate to naturally bring carbon dioxide levels back down to pre-industrial levels in the short term. If we were to stop all emissions tomorrow, it would take the planet hundreds of thousands of years to recover naturally.

Sadly, we’re not even close to slowing carbon emissions. Only last week, the US reported that carbon dioxide levels were up 2.4 parts per million during 2007 alone. The future is bleak for the planet balancing back into its prehistoric atmospheric carbon equilibrium…

The following is a blurb from the dust cover of “The 12th Planet”.

“Dear Reader, The Earth Chronicles series is based on the premise that mythology is not fanciful but the repository of ancient memories; that the Bible ought to be read literally as a historic/scientific document; and that ancient civilizations – older and greater than assumed – were the product of knowledge brought to Earth by the Anunnaki, “Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came.” The 12th Planet, the first book of the series, presents ancient evidence for the existence of an additional planet in the Solar System: the home planet of the Anunnaki. In confirmation of this evidence, recent data from unmanned spacecraft has led astronomers to actively search for what is being called “Planet X.” The subsequent volume, The Stairway to Heaven, traces man’s unending search for immortality to a spaceport in the Sinai Peninsula and to the Giza pyramids, which had served as landing beacons for it- refuting the notion that these pyramids were built by human pharaohs. Recently, records by an eye witness to a forgery of an inscription by the pharaoh Khufu inside the Great Pyramid corroborated the book’s conclusions. The Wars of Gods and Men, recounting events closer to our times, concludes that the Sinai spaceport was destroyed 4,000 years ago with nuclear weapons. Photographs of Earth from space clearly show evidence of such an explosion. Such gratifying corroboration of audacious conclusions has been even swifter for The Lost Realms. In the relatively short interval between the completion of the manuscript and its publication, archaeologists, linguists, and other scientists have offered a “coastal theory” in lieu of the “frozen trekking” one to account for man’s arrival in the Americas – in ships, as this volume has concluded; have “suddenly discovered 2000 years of missing civilization,” in the words of a Yale University scholar – confirming this book’s conclusion, and are now linking the beginnings of such civilizations to those of the Old World, as Sumerian texts and biblical verses suggest. I trust that modern science will continue to confirm ancient knowledge.”

About the author of The Earth Chronicles, also from dust cover…

“Zecharia Sitchin was raised in Palestine, where he acquired a profound knowledge of modern and ancient Hebrew, other Semitic and European languages, the Old Testament, and the history and archaeology of the Near East. He attended the London School of Economics and Political Science and graduated from the University of London, majoring in economic history. A leading journalist and editor in Israel for many years, he now lives and writes in New York. One of the few scholars able to read and understand Sumerian, Sitchin has based The Earth Chronicles, his recent series of books dealing with Earth’s and man’s histories and prehistories, on the information and texts written down on clay tablets by the ancient civilizations of the Near East. His books have been widely translated, reprinted in paperback editions, converted to Braille for the blind.”

In the very beginning of earth’s history, this planet was a giant, red hot, roiling, boiling sea of molten rock – a magma ocean. The heat had been generated by the repeated high speed collisions of much smaller bodies of space rocks that continually clumped together as they collided to form this planet. As the collisions tapered off the earth began to cool, forming a thin crust on its surface. As the cooling continued, water vapor began to escape and condense in the earth’s early atmosphere. Clouds formed and storms raged, raining more and more water down on the primitive earth, cooling the surface further until it was flooded with water, forming the seas.

It is theorized that the true age of the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, formed at about the same time as the rest of our solar system. The oldest rocks geologists have been able to find are 3.9 billion years old. Using radiometric dating methods to determine the age of rocks means scientists have to rely on when the rock was initially formed (as in – when its internal minerals first cooled). In the infancy of our home planet the entire earth was molten (melted) rock, a magma ocean.

Since we can only measure as far back in time as we had solid rock on this planet, we are limited in how we can measure the real age of the earth. Due to the forces of plate tectonics, our planet is also a very dynamic one; new mountains forming, old ones wearing down, volcanoes melting and reshaping new crust. The continual changing and reshaping of the earth’s surface that involves the melting down and reconstructing of old rock has pretty much eliminated most of the original rocks that came with earth when it was newly formed. So the age is a theoretical age.

The Mystery of When Life Began

Scientists are still trying to unravel one of the greatest mysteries of earth: When did “life” first appear and how did it happen? It is estimated that the first life forms on earth were primitive, one-celled creatures that appeared about 3 billion years ago. That’s pretty much all there was for about the next two billion years. Then suddenly those single celled organisms began to evolve into multicellular organisms. Then an unprecedented profusion of life in incredibly complex forms began to fill the oceans. Some crawled from the seas and took residence on land, perhaps to escape predators in the ocean. A cascading chain of new and increasingly differentiated forms of life appeared all over the planet, only to be virtually annihilated by an unexplained mass extinction. It would be the first of several mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

Scientists have been looking increasingly to space to explain these mass extinctions that have been happening almost like clockwork since the beginning of “living” time. Perhaps we’ve been getting periodically belted by more space rocks (ie. asteroids), or the collision of neutron stars happening too close for comfort? Each time a mass extinction occurred, life found a way to come back from the brink. Life has tenaciously clung to this small blue planet for the last three billion years. Scientists are finding new cues as to how life first began on earth in some really interesting places – the deep ocean.

First, the gap between the humanities and the sciences is bridged by some historians interested in the history of earth science, and by some geoscientists interested in the history of their fields. A society to which both historians and earth scientists belong allows for mutually beneficial exchanges of ideas.

Second, because the history of earth science is a global topic, a national group or a commission with limited membership may not be suitably flexible. A society open to all and cosmopolitan in composition and outlook provides this element of breadth.

Third, in the past, even with all the other journals available, it has been difficult to find an outlet for scholarly works in the history of the earth sciences. A prime goal of the new society was immediate establishment of a refereed journal to serve the needs of its members.

Fourth, historical studies of ideas concerning the Earth, institutions involved in such research, and prominent workers have seldom received much attention. With greater prominence and a journal dedicated to the field, more support for intellectual endeavors in the broad domain of geoscience history has been forthcoming.

CEI’s new campaign comes in the face of Gore’s March 1st announcement of a major new set of ads from his Alliance for Climate Protection to promote the global warming issue. CEI’s response includes both a broadcast television ad and related online video.

“Global warming activists warn us about the alleged threats from global warming, but are usually silent about the much more immediate threats from global warming policies,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman, also the ad co-creator. “Restricting access to affordable energy is a sure recipe for increasing poverty, disease and human misery around the world.”

The broadcast ad premiered this morning at a press conference at the National Press Club, and will run in markets around the country over the next two weeks, including Boston, Phoenix, Orlando and Pittsburgh. The ad will also be running in the Washington, D.C. market on cable news programs on CNN, CNBC and Fox News Channel.

CEI previously stirred international controversy in 2006 with a pair of CEI ads on global warming alarmism, which carried the tagline “CO2: They Call It Pollution; We Call It Life.

Recently, I was called a liar on national radio.

This is never a pleasant experience, but it’s even worse when the evidence used against you is the World Wide Web’s most popular search engine, Google.

I was being interviewed by conservative radio talk-show host Dennis Prager when he claimed that Palestinians have never staged a large protest against terrorism. I responded that in fact I had witnessed several demonstrations, that a particularly large one in 1996 received widespread media coverage.

“Since I can’t find it on Google, you’re obviously lying,” Mr. Prager informed me—and his listeners—as we returned from a commercial.

As a professor of modern Middle Eastern history and Islamic studies at UC Irvine, I use Google dozens of times per day. But I was stunned by Prager’s remark, more specifically by the idea that a minute-long Internet search would provide sufficient evidence to pass judgment on a historical claim, let alone a person’s moral (and professional) character. But in today’s postmodern, depthless and confrontational culture, speed and stridency have become more valuable than accuracy and deliberation. Those who search for historical and moral complexity are too often shouted down and dismissed as liars or as supporters of the enemy—Saddam Hussein or American imperialism or both.

As our interview continued, Prager’s accusation, bolstered by his Google search, began to worry me. Could my memory have fabricated events in order to support a desired but inaccurate rendition of history? How could I know for sure without the benefit of another commercial break to out-Google him?

One thing was certain: listeners reached the conclusion Prager intended, as a caller expressed disgust at my “looseness with the truth.”

Later, as my head cleared, I began to realize just how dangerous our on-air exchange was for the future of history—as a scholarly discipline and a public trust. To begin with, the Google standard of history assumes that if something hasn’t made it onto the web, it never happened. This is clearly nonsense, as there are innumerable contemporary events that never become Googleable “facts” because the people involved have neither the access to official “recorders of history” (such as reporters, activists or scholars) nor the technology to put it on the web themselves. Or the information could be on the web, but in Arabic, French, Japanese or a hundred other languages Prager might not have the software to decipher. Indeed, at the beginning of the show, Prager claimed, based on another web search, that I have never written anything critical of Palestinian violence. But, as I then informed him, I had in fact written an article in Le Monde after the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000. Perhaps if he’d used google.fr, he would have found it.

Google history also ignores the fact that quite a few important events occurred before the birth of the web. Did the Revolutionary War not happen because it’s not cached by Google or in the Times’ online archive? Indeed, after the show—too late for the speed of talk radio—I remembered that I also published an op-ed piece for the Christian Science Monitor in the wake of the 1996 wave of Palestinian terrorism, too early for the Monitor’s online archives, which is why Prager didn’t find it through Google. And only days before our interview, I wrote an article for Tikkun magazine (which was on its website) criticizing continued violence by—and, as important, against—Palestinians. I still don’t know why that didn’t turn up on his Google search.

The problems of Google history are not restricted to the competing claims of Israeli and Palestinian violence. A group of high school teachers recently showed me the materials they’ve been given to help their students learn about Iraq. It reads like Google history—a few names and dates, with the nuances and complexities of the country’s history and our role in it nowhere to be found. Worse still, most of the materials were created by several mainstream news organizations for their “educational” websites. This is one reason professors frown on students using the web for research.

On the other hand, a review of the way major anti-war organizations such as ANSWER render Iraq’s history reads like they were written by typing “far-left conspiracy history Iraq” into the Google search box: it’s all U.S. and British imperialism and oil, with Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime given bit parts at best. Real history is a lot messier and harder to find.

It took me several days of searching on and off the web, as well as a helpful e-mail from a journalist friend, but I found the “evidence” of the Palestinian demonstration that, according to Google, never happened. It took place on March 5, 1996, and was covered by the Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers. But for some reason, it never made it onto the web.

There’s a reason history should be written by historians and not by Internet software or talk-show hosts: Who else today has the time and patience to sift through the past to unearth the events and ideas that are fundamental to reasoned public debate on the most crucial issues facing our society? The ancient Greeks long ago realized that history is crucial to democracy; especially in wartime, we Googleize it at our peril.