I wanted to be able to fully strip and replace parts of a Colt 45 Mark IV .45 caliber and found this remarkable video of how to fully disassemble the sidearm. (On a side note, use an outside workbench or put a few sheets of newspaper on your desk before beginning this process. I also noted it was nice to use a Sharpie and circle and number the parts in the order they came off and group them similar to that shown in the video.
This is a question that had me thinking most of the time this week. I find it so controversial in the sense that the two subjects are virtually involved in every action that we take on a daily basis. Such a simple question to ask yet it’s something that most people do not even care to think about most of the time.
Science is a systematized study of knowledge. This is as basic as it can get as I got this definition way back in my elementary years. It evolved from man’s unending hunger to understand the things that surround him. For instance, man’s discovery of fire is arguably the most important discovery in prehistoric times as the discovery of electricity is to us. Prehistoric men rubbed two pieces of wood or two flint stones together to produce enough heat to start a fire. They didn’t know anything about the consequences that might have been associated with their discovery, all they cared about was getting warmed up during cold winters and cooking to stop eating raw meat.
Morality, on the other hand, is the rightness or wrongness of an action or thought in reference to a distinct social group with a distinct social norm. In about the same time as the discovery of fire, man saw the importance of living together in larger groups to ensure survival. They formed bands which consisted of 10-100 individuals. As they did, some moral sentiments were formed. They saw the need to cooperate to be able to compete with other hominid groups for food, shelter, and basically all other commodities that today’s nation fight for, only simpler in form. Thus, in this scenario, morality was born.
To be able to shed light unto this question, I am going to refer to an article entitled “Scientist at Work, Moralist of Science Ponders Its Power” published in New York Times. It is about a certain Dr. Leon Kass, who have been appointed by President Bush to be the chairman of the President’s Council of Bioethics, a physician and biochemist in training but chose to teach philosophy and ethics at the University of Chicago.
He claimed that “Science has become so dangerous, because it is a powerful force, yet one that has been deliberately stripped of moral values by scientists who are trained to pursue the truth objectively.”
I completely go the other way on this notion made by Dr. Kass. A scientist as he is, he should be among the first ones to advocate advancements in knowledge much like a modern equivalent of a prehistoric hominid who first discovered fire. For one thing, the pursuit of knowledge has been a medium of offering a better life for man. And for another, scientists cannot, as of the time of their invention, judge the rightness or wrongness of their outcome.
Its not the invention itself that causes immorality (in reference to the majority) but its how people use them to pursue an intention that might not correlate to most people’s interest.
Albert Einstein did not intend to split an atom apart to destroy the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan years later, Alfred Nobel did not intend to make a nitroglycerine explosive (later known as dynamite) to tear nations apart, and certainly, the Wright brothers did not intend to invent a flying machine so a nation can have selfish dominion over those who aren’t able to afford them.
In similar way, some inventions lead to a more eventful output than what it was really meant for. A concrete example would be Finasteride, a drug that has been originally projected as a preventive measure for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) which was supposed to further decrease the risk of prostate cancer in middle aged male patients has been recalled for further studies after FDA received reports of its liver damaging properties. It has been found out a few years after the recall that, the drug actually is a more effective hair growth agent for individuals who are having alopecia (pattern baldness). Thus, it found its way again to the market but this time for another less toxic but more productive purpose.
To go back to the question posed, I am convinced that morality and science are much like oil and water. Surely, they can be contained together as long as they are not in any way forced to mix together. Water is always much denser than the oil. As the question on which one is oil and which one is water, it depends on how one weighs them.
Back when I was in college I took off every Summer and went hitch-hiking to Canada. This is no small feat for a boy from Florida as Canada is at least a couple of thousand miles from where I lived.
However, Canada was then a lot more hospitable to Americans than America was, and I suspect still is. I would not recommend that any American try hitch-hiking in America, at least not as a “vacation”. Americans who hitch-hike in America are considered vagrants, even back in the late ’70s and early ’80s when I traveled this way.
The summer of my first junior year (I spent five years in college. You can only be a freshman, sophomore or senior once, but you can be a junior forever.) I toured the Maritime’s (The Eastern Provinces of Canada) and as Fall approached and I had accomplished my tour I thought I would head West to visit some friends in Western Canada from previous trips before returning home.
I found myself on the outskirts of Thunder Bay, Ontario, just after dark on a lonely Saturday night. (In mid-to-late August this must have been around 10 PM.) In Canada, this is “Highway 1″, which is the main national highway that crosses the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
I was looking around for a safe, out-of-the-way place where I could unroll my sleeping bag and get some sleep without being noticed when a late-model Pontiac Trans-am pulls over and a young man, not more than a few years older than me pulls over and hops out of the car.
“Can you drive?” he asks me. “Uh, yes.” I told him. (It’s pretty rare when you are hitch-hiking for someone you just met asks you to drive his car. In fact, I can only recall it ever happening once before. It was in Idaho, Interstate 15, heading South. an 18-wheeler Peterbilt, privately-owned-and-,driven rig picked me up. After an hour or so the driver asked me if I would like a cup of coffee. I told him, “No, thanks.” The driver stood up (yes, he stood up) keeping one foot on the gas pedal and a couple of fingers gently on the wheel and told me it was my turn to drive. He had an automatic coffee-maker and was going to fix himself some coffee. I sat down in the seat and took the wheel. “Keep it at 2300 rpm”, he told me. Pretty much freaked me out as I had never driven anything so big….back to the Trans Am.)
He popped the small trunk, grabbed my backpack, scrunched it into the truck among his carefully packed luggage (my backpack on these summer trips normally weighed more than 100 pounds), and tossed me the keys to his car. He said, “drive”, and then he got into the back seat. (The back seat in an F-body is pretty damn small and to think this guy would be able to sleep there told me how desperate he was.)
I was a bit hesitant, but I got into the drivers seat. I was thinking that he had stolen the car and I was reluctant to drive.
He told me, “I have to report to a new job in Edmonton, Alberta, I’m a hydraulics engineer, at 8 AM on Monday morning. I am from Halifax, I have been driving for 20 hours and I need to sleep. Can you drive?”
“Yes”, I told him. “I can drive, no problem”.
“This is a 455 Trans-AM (455 cubic inch displacement V-8 engine)” he told me. Can you drive fast?”
“Yes, actually, I have a Datsun ‘71 240-Z, and I have a dorm buddy who has two 455 Trans-Ams.” (Actually, the 240-Z, 2.4 liter or 145 cubic inch engine, had about the same stop speed of as the Trans Am, a bit over 200 kph, but the Trans Am was much faster from 0-100 kph)
He scoffed at my 240-Z (which is actually a very quick, nimble and fast car and could do over 200 kph, with a front spoiler. Before I put the front spoiler on it I needed a lot of new, fresh road to even do 175 kph, because the car was airfoil shaped and at high speed it would obtain lift and drift. Once the front spoiler was installed, the car would hug the road and I could even take my hands off the wheel doing 200 kph on freshly paved Highway 20 in the Western panhandle of North Florida, the “Pensacola Road”.), but seemed to gain some confidence by my stating that I did own another notable fast car.
“Don’t spare the gas”, he told me. “I do not care how fast you go, just drive safely. However, you have to drive fast because it’s over 1500 miles to Edmonton, and I have to be there by this time tomorrow night.”
I had been thinking it would take me days to reach Edmonton so this was like a God-send to me. I could tell he did not really want to talk a lot, so I fired up the car, and carefully put the auto-transmission into drive and smoothly accelerated up to highway speed. “Faster”, he said.
I took the car up to around 120 mph (190 kph) and he seemed to be happy with that. The car was rock-solid stable, the highway was great, smooth, and with wide shoulders. After about 30 minutes we began to skirt a town and he asked me to go into the town to top off the tank and get some ice cream. We topped off the tank first. The car only took a few gallons, but he told me it was late and we would not know when and where we would be able to get fuel again.
There were only a few people around at the ice cream shop we stopped at after fueling up, but as we left I inadvertently barked the tires when backing out of the parking place. This is not hard to do in a 455 Trans-Am. A light tap on the gas pedal and the tires talk.
I kept the car slow going back to Highway 1 so that we could eat our ice creams. Once I got out to the highway, I quickly went to 100 mph (160 khp) and then slowly accelerated from there, until I hit 120 mph (190 kph), where I was comfortable. The car still had plenty of go. I was just at a comfortable cruising speed, flying low over Western Ontario.
About 20 or 25 minutes after we left the ice cream shop the dark prairie sky lit up with blue flashing lights. I could see the grill of a police car just a few feet off my rear bumper. It was a shock. I slapped blindly into the backseat, “wake up, wake up”. I turned on the right side turn signal and gradually let off the gas. The cop car dropped back and I pulled off to the paved shoulder of the road.
This was in the early 80’s when a driver was expected to remain in the vehicle until the police driver approached the driver. Today, I believe it is more appropriate for the police to stay in their car and order the driver out of the car over the police car’s loud speaker, especially if a car is pulled over for such excessive speed.
“How fast were you going?” my benevolent friend asked me. “Maybe 120 (mph)” I said. “Shit!” he said.
The police car was OPP, Ontario Provincial Police, not to be trifled with. The OPP asked for my drivers license and I gave it to him. He ordered us out of the car. To my surprise he then crawled inside the car, looking around with his flashlight before emerging and asking me to open the trunk. I opened the truck with the keys and again I was surprised to see how he nearly crawled inside it, inspecting everything there.
“Don’t worry”, the car owner told me, “we don’t have any alcohol”. (The law in Canada is/was an open container law. If you have a “broken” 6-pack, then you are considered to be drinking while driving. That’s why packs of beer in Canada were/are sold in a sealed cardboard case. If you have a bottle of whiskey and the cap seal is broken, even if the bottle is full, you are subject to citation or arrest, even if it is in the trunk of the car where you cannot access it. I suppose the theory is that you could throw a bottle of beer out of the car, or you could put water in the whiskey bottle to make it appear full, or that you could occasionally pull over and fix a new drink from the bottle in the otherwise inaccessible truck.)
After the OPP inspected the trunk of the car, the owner crawled back into the back seat and acted like he was going back to sleep.
“Who’s car is this?” the OPP asked me. “His”, I said.
“Where are you going?” he asked me. “Edmonton”, I told him.
“Why were you driving so fast?” he asked me. I told him the owner of the car, the one sleeping in the back seat had a new job appointment on Monday morning and we needed to get to Edmonton as fast as possible.
The OPP asked me to pop the hood. I did. He asked me to rev the engine. I did. He closed the hood himself and then began inspecting my drivers license again.
“When will you be back in Ontario?” he asked me. “Maybe next summer, sir. I am a college student, just traveling for the summer, “I’m not sure if I will ever be back.”
“You squealed your tires when you left that town back there, why did you do that?” he asked me. “I’m sorry, sir, this is a Trans-Am. I didn’t mean to spin the tires.”
“It took me 20 minutes to catch up with you”, he told me, seeming to beleaguer his own vehicle as if it were inferior to the job.
“I’m sorry, sir. There are no cars on the road. Since we left that last town we have not even encountered a single car going the other direction and we have not passed any cars going in our direction. The road is wide open. You have a great highway.”
“Florida?” he said again as he looked at my license. “Yes, sir” I said. (I knew that in Florida that the law was that any driver caught exceeding 100 mph under any conditions was to be arrested on criminal charges and only released by bond granted by a judge. I suspected Canadian laws to be similar, so I really thought I was in some deep doo-doo.)
The OPP handed me back my drivers license and said “keep the speed down. Good luck.”
I quietly picked my jaw off the pavement, got back in the 455 Trans-Am and eased it back onto the highway. In my rear-view mirror I could see the OPP car turn around.
I quickly brought the car up to 120 mph and glided through the night while the dull and dark countryside of Western Ontario slowly changed into Manitoba and then into Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Will the real Michael Turner please stand up?
MOND and CDM
CDM (Cold Dark Matter) is, in my opinion, a scientific misconception, a lot like the Theory of the Luminescent Aether (or “ether”). Years ago, and I mean well over 100 years ago, people knew that light was a wave. Light was originally thought to be a particle, but the discovery of interference pretty much sealed the wave theory of light in the 19th century. Today we know that light is both a partcile and a wave and it is also neither, but this post is not about quantum physics, and it’s not about WIMPS or MACHOS, but an alternative to CDM called MOND, and this post is about a famous Physicist/Cosmologist, University of Chicago Professor Michael Turner. (No, this post is not about the other polymeric materials Professor Michael Turner, but the one I admire and abhor. This wikipedia article on Professor Michael Turner provides little more information.)
But first I should explain about the luminescent aether. By all available evidence it was observed that waves travel through some sort of medium. Sound travels through water or air, or through solids. Water-type waves travel through liquids, so it was reasoned that light must also travel through something. However, no one could detect what it was that light was moving through since it could move through a vacuum, and there was nothing in a vacuum. The ancient Greeks had speculated of a substance that existed above the clouds, that filled space and held the stars in place, so that’s where the word “aether” comes from.the Greeks, those amazing inventors of natural philosophy.
There were always problems with Aetherial theory, but it helped explain so much that it was generally accepted as being real by the scientific community. Christiaan Huygens is credited with creating the aether, and while it was largely critiqued by Newton, Newton’s ideas were abandoned and after Maxwell came along it came to be determined that the aether had to be absolutely fixed and still, a unique frame of reference. Indeed, the aether held miraculous (or magic) properties. It had to be fluid but millions of times more rigid than steel, massless but without drag (or the planets would slow down). Also, it had to be completely transparent and non-compressive. The aether had to possess self-contradicting properties. The aether reeked of properties similar to CDM, Cold Dark Matter, yet the aether was so entrenched into physics at this point it was simply assumed to exist.
In 1905 Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity blew away the aether, showing that there is no such thing as absolute time, motion or position. The indispensable aether just suddenly disappeared and all the countless years of scientific effort that went into defining it and exploring it just “poof” went up in smoke.
Enter CDM (Cold Dark Matter)
Here’s the problem.
Let me set the stage, first.
Since the time of Copernicus in 1514, we’ve known that our Sun is but a simple and quite ordinary star in a sea of stars, but for 400 years, until 1922 the entire Universe consisted of The Milky Way Galaxy. No one had a clue that the Universe was unimaginably more vast, which is not so surprising considering that for at least 10 thousand years we considered ourselves to be at the center of the “universe”, and before that we didn’t even have an inkling.
In 1919 Edwin Hubble gets assigned to the Wilson Observatory, about the same time that the Hooker, a brand new 100 inch telescope arrives (the biggest in the World at the time), and begins investigating Cepheid variables and he spots a few in the “Andromeda Nebula”. The nature of Cepheid stars enables someone to calculate how far they are by their apparent brightness. The Hooker Telescope was the first one powerful enough to spot Cepheid stars outside the Milkyway and in 1925 Hubble published his results. Not only did Hubble discover that there were other galaxies than our own, but he discovered they were receding from each other, fairly uniformly over distance, that the Universe was expanding.
Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicted that the Universe would be expanding or contracting, but Einstein himself didn’t believe this, thinking the Universe had to be static. He embraced Hubble’s discovery and called his own “static-state” mistake as “the biggest blunder of my life”.
The expansion rate of the Universe is generally referred to as ‘Omega”, or “Ω”. If Omega is less than 1.0 then the Universe will expand to a point where it stops, and then begins to collapse upon itself. If Omega is more than 1.0 then the Universe will continue to expand forever. It was generally believed, between the time of Hubble and about 10 years ago that Omega most likely would be exactly 1.0, which would mean the Universe would continue to expand at an ever decreasing rate but would never quite reach the point that it would begin to collapse.
Ten years ago it was discovered that not only is the Universe expanding but at an ever increasing rate, thus putting Omega to be more than 1.0, and growing. That is, Omega is not a constant. Why this would be happening was a great mystery.
The second problem that crept up was that gravitational theory works fine in explaining the orbits of planets, much like in our own solar system, ballistic trajectories, and spacecraft maneuvering, but it does not explain the rotation of galaxies. The further an orbiting body is from the center of mass the slower it should orbit (There is a saying in Astronautics, “you speed up to slow down and you slow down to speed up”. This means that if you are in a fixed orbit around a gravitational object and you increase your speed going forward, then you will lift yourself to a higher orbit and then your orbital speed will become slower, it will take you longer to orbit the gravitational body. Likewise, if in a stable orbit your decelerate, then you will drop to a lower orbit, but your orbital speed will increase. Ironic, but true). but in spiral galaxies the outer arms move much faster than they should.
Now enters CDM. Cold Dark Matter was invented to explain the rotation of galaxies. It has encountered some problems along it’s lifetime, but various modifications have pretty much kept up with what is observed. However, this is a theory that was created to explain something mysterious, so it was designed to solve a problem. CDM does not make any predictions about what CDM is, which is a lack of science in itself. Scientific theories should make some testable predictions.
It is speculated that Cold Dark Matter can be a couple of things or a combination of both. The first are WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles): these would be particles that do not interact with other particles via the Strong, Weak, or Electro-magnetic forces, but only via Gravity. Pretty bizarre. Needless, to say, no WIMPS have been discovered.
The second type of Cold Dark Matter would be MACHOS (Massive Compact Halo Objects). These could be anything from brown dwarfs (planets as large or larger than Jupiter, but too small to self-ignite fusion), black holes, neutron stars (starts that have burned out but do not have enough mass to collapse to a singularity, white dwarfs.
CDM Theory suggests that all these spiral galaxies must be surrounded with spherical halos several times as large as the galaxies themselves to cause the spiral arms to move at a rate faster than Einstein-Newtonian gravitational theory predicts.
To me this just seems insane. Now, to top it off, to explain the accelerating expansion of the Universe, we now have something called “dark energy“, as if Darth Vadar isn’t enough. The dark forces are upon us.
Euclidean Geometry was for a couple of thousand years thougth to be the real geometry, but it is not. It is only a point in the space of all possible geometries. Euclidean Geometry works for people, because we live in a very flat kind of space, but get down to particle physics sizes or astronomical scales and Euclidean geometry just doesn’t apply.
In the same way, Newtonian Gravitational theory was show by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity (1916), to be only a minor subset of space-time, it works for normal people well enough, but it does not apply in particle physics or on cosmological scales.
Why then can’t Einstein’s theory be merely a subset of something else? Well, someone has proposed just that with MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics), a theory first proposed by an Israeli professor of physics in 1983, Mordehai Milgrom.
Under ‘MOND” I also include related modifications such as “NGT” or Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory and Conformal Gravity, and of course TeVeS (Tensor-Vector-Scalar) gravitational theories.
Newton’s theory is that F=ma (Force equals mass times acceleration). This has been verified and verified, but never when the acceleration involved was extremely small.
Miligom’s equation is quite elegant, and when solving for it, a physical constant was discovered and that was that when the acceleration affecting an object of mass was so slow as to be close to this physical constant, then there would be dramatic changes in gravitational effects and behaviors of objects.
That Physical Constant is the acceleration you get by dividing the speed of light by the lifetime of the universe. If you start at the time of the Big Bang and come to the present day at this acceleration, then you reach the speed of light as it is today.
This, in effect implies that the speed of light changes with the age of the Universe. Indeed, it implies that the speed of sound was much greater than the speed of light at one second after the big bang.
Another thing to note is that the “Standard Model” of particle physics is wrong because it predicts that neutrinos should have no mass and they have been proven to have mass in just the past few years. There are three types (flavors) of neutrinos, one for each of the leptons in the Standard model, the electron, the Muon, and the Tau. Which actually means there are 12 since there is an anti-particle for each. Recently it has been discovered that neutrinos oscillate between flavors. It has also been speculated that neutrinos may be their own antiparticles. That is, if they can oscillate between flavors they might also be able to oscillate between spin values.
Then there are sterile neutrinos, but that’s another story. I am diverging from causality here.
My point is that there is little to no evidence of Cold Dark Matter (CDM), yet it has taken up thousands of years of research time of some of the best physicists and cosmologists on the planet, yet it is aetherial.
One such fellow who has dedicated his life to the study of CDM is Professor Michael Turner of the University of Chicago, who thinks that visible, ordinary matter, like that which makes up the Earth and the Sun and our visible Galaxy only accounts for about 4% of all the mass-energy in the Universe.
Dude, whatever happened to you and your mind?
One of my main criticisms about Professor Michael Turner is that when confronted with MOND and similar revisions of Einstein-Newtonian gravitation is his total rejection of these theories based on the fact that so many years of research by countless physicists has gone into explaining CDM that such time cannot simply be relegated as a lost cause. Michael Turner, of the University of Chicago, adamantly opposes simply explanations simply because he’s dedicated his life’s work to CDM.
Why and how am I in a position to argue with such a noted cosmologist and physicist as Michael Turner? Because I studied under Paul Dirac at Florida State University before his retirement and once argued with him directly on the meaning of inertia, and he admitted to me and other students that he could not adequately explain what exactly “inertia” is. And inertia plays a huge role in the theory of gravitation on a cosmological scale. If I can call him out, then I can call out Michael Turner of the University of Chicago.
What the hell are you thinking? Ten or twenty years from now it will be found that CDM, at least the WIMPS you are looking for, do not exist. Dark Energy does not exist. Some simple revisions to General Relativity will suffice, along with a deeper understanding of neutrinos. I do admit I think there are a lot of HALO (MACHOS) objects out there, but they alone do not account for the solution to the gravitational problems you are facing.
Yet I have little hope of Michael Turner abandoning his years of efforts in trying to establish himself as the preeminent thinker on the dark side. Like Darth Vadar himself, he is consumed by the dark side.
The vast Universe is there to humble us all. I do not know the answers, but I am pretty sure I can recognize the aether and know that it is not real, only a runaway figment that served a usefull purpose for a while, only to be cast away along with all the work of the lifetimes of so many valuable minds. I would hate to see that Dr. Michael Turner, of the University of Chcago, the inventor of “CDM” and its most vocal advocate will go down in the annuls of history as pursing a lost cause.
Will the real Michael Turner please stand up?
The previous installment of this series can be found here, at Who is Michael Turner (Part II)
I was doing some research on one of my clients and found this page, Jim Boykin’s SEO Photo Album. How many photos of me, the real Michael Turner, are there on this page?
The first employee of HSEO/SMSI to post the correct number gets a free dinner for two at Sentro or Panagatan.
Legal Disclaimer: The author of this blog does not intend to malign or vilify the reputation of the people involved in this post. The following events are chronologically presented based on the facts that support them through legal documents and audio recordings attached herein.
Previous installment of this series can be found here, at Good Cop? Bad Cop (Part I)
After the incident happened on June 10, 2008, Ryam D. Estojero went home with the optimistic hope of letting everything pass the night and start anew. He claimed he did not tell anyone about the incident that happened that night including his brother whom he asked to fetch the motorized sikad at the site of the incident.
Morning came and Ryam’s sister, Ann Estojero, noticed that he was not able to get out of bed and was complaining about the aches and pains all over his body. That was when he shared to his family members everything that happened the previous evening. His siblings felt the need for impartiality of the narrated events and decided they had to take action.
On June 11, 2008, Ryam D. Estojero accompanied by his sister, Ann D. Estojero went to City of Opol Municipal Police station to have the case put into blotter (refer to the text (transcribed) version the the police blotter or to the photo copy of the police blotter). They would have opted to file a case on the same day but “it took us too long to get his medical certificate (refer to the text (transcribed) version of the medical certificate or the photo copy of the medical certificate) on the 11th” Ann Estojero said. On June 12, 2008, after getting the medical certificate documenting Ryam’s injuries from the events of June 10, 2008, they headed to the Municipal Hall and to the Barangay Hall to formally blotter and file a case against “Victor Castillon, Jr.”
On June 15, 2008, just three days after the case was formally filed at the Barangay Hall, Castillon went to the residence of Ryam D. Estojero to confront him about his filing of the case. He allegedly stormed towards the house of Ryam D. Estojero but he was at his neighbor’s house. Anna D. Estojero was at home that time and was asked by Castillon about the whereabouts of her brother. The panic-stricken sister told him that Ryam was at a neighbor’s house. Eventually, Castillon was able to find the 21 year old driver at a neighbor’s house. Estojero claimed, “He grabbed me and asked why I filed a case against him and that he insisted I was the perpetrator. He then pulled his gun, cocked it and punched me with his left hand in front of a lot of people”. Afraid of Castillon brandishing his government issued firearm and to avoid getting himself shot, Estojero had no choice but to hide among the people who were at their neighbor’s house to play cards. Castillon was hoisting his gun around in front of the people who were present that time saying they had nothing to do with anything. “He was very ruthless and he was screaming at our neighbors and repeatedly saying ‘Wala kayong pakialam!’” Estojero added.
Anna D. Estojero asserted that when she found out through a neighbor that his brother was punched and was threatened with a gun, she ran as fast as she could to her neighbor’s house and told Castillon to settle the dispute at the barangay hall. She claimed that like everybody who were there, she was very afraid to even go near Castillon because he had a gun and he was furious and was screaming.
Enraged and infuriated, Castillon allegedly left the scene by saying “Babalikan ko kayo!” (I will be back to get you!).
The facts stated above are according to the interview of Ryam D. Estojero by Philippine Attorney Joe Pallugna. You can refer here to listen to the 82 minute interview. It is also available for text version which is available in Visayan version and English version for you to verify its accuracy.
Will the real Michael Turner please stand up?
The previous installment of this series can be found here, at Who is Michael Turner (Part I)
Since there are a lot of Michael Turners out there, I thought I would go through some of the not-so-good ones first so that the better ones will be at the top. Here’s an example of the bottom-of-the-barrel Michael Turners:
Michael Turner is a Georgia prisoner serving life plus 20-year sentence for burglary, rape, aggravated sodomy, and aggravated assault. This guy has my specific name, to the letter. Michael Alan Turner. Still, he’s a scumbag. I do not know the specifics of the crime he committed. You can find a copy of the decision of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals here, and if that doesn’t work you can download my PDF copy.
In September 2002, Michael Turner filed a section 2254 petition for writ of habeas corpus. On July 28, 2003, the magistrate judge recommended denial of Michael Turner’s petition. (This was within a month of the beginning of HarvestSEO and just one week before I registered the domain name.
By the way, I’m not an expert on this kind of stuff, but I believe only an incarcerated person can apply for habeas corpus, so if this was me I would have had to have someone else register the domain. Of course, it would still probably have been difficult to communicate with my then employees in The Philippines, let alone my clients, and get the business running.
On October 18, 2004, the district court adopted the recommendation and dismissed Michael Turner’s Petition. Turner submitted some other motion under Rule 60(b)(1) seeking to overturn the district court’s dismissal of his petition on October 17, 2005 (a year later less one day) for being untimely. The district court denied this motion (no date stated) and Turner appealed, apparently to the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Anyway, the 11th Circuit Court overturned the district court on September 20, 2006, while I was honeymooning in The Wonderful Philippines, saying that the Rule 60(b)(1) motion was timely and should have been considered on its merits, however it also said that it considered the Rule 60(1)(b) motion to be a rehash of his petition for writ of habeas corpus which had already been denied and sent the case back to the district court with instructions to deny the Rule 60(b)(1) motion on other grounds.
Thus, with his petition for writ of habeas corpus denied, Michael Alan Turner remains in some State of Georgia penitentiary, and barring the rare circumstances where an innocent man is convicted, and assuming such is not the case here, then he’s unlikely to get out of jail any time soon.
I was able to find some information on this guy. You can do an offender search through the Georgia Prison website. Search for “Turner, Michael, Alan” and “Life” for Sentence Status. One alias is “Michael Allen Turner”. He’s been in jail since July, 1985, so he’s been in jail for 23 years and is 59 years old, so he was 36 when he got locked up. There is no indication he is roaming around The Philippines, other than that he has the very same name as mine.
Ne’s not quite as gwapo as me either.
I am not familiar with Georgia sentencing guidelines, but a sentence of life plus 20 years sounds like a long time. It reminds me of the joke where some 50 year old guy gets sentenced to 60 years imprisonment. He tells the judge, “I don’t think I can do it.” and the judge responds, “Well, just do the best you can.”
This is one Michael Turner I am certainly glad I am not. I would much rather be the famous comic book artist Michael Turner even though the latter is dead. At least he led a decent life and made a difference in thousands of peoples lives.
Legal Disclaimer: The author of this blog does not intend to malign or vilify the reputation of the people involved in this post. The following events are chronologically presented based on the facts that support them through legal documents and audio recordings attached herein. A good reference on this and future posts detailing events can be found at the Law Professor, detailing Philippines Libel Laws.
In every criminal prosecution for libel, the truth may be given in evidence to the court and if it appears that the matter charged as libelous is true, and, moreover, that it was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the defendants shall be acquitted.
On June 10, 2008, at approximately 8 o’clock in the evening, a motorized sikad (a locally made, makeshift, pump-boat motor-powered, tricycle) driver in the name of Ryam D. Estojero claimed he had stomach trouble while doing his routine round trips at Johndorf Subdivision, Barra Opol, Misamis Oriental. With the uncontrollable urge to defecate, he looked for a suitable place, parked his motorized sikad, and went on his business, in what he claims he thought to be a vacant lot..
Suddenly, he heard a woman, later known as Anna Lynn B. Castillon, scream “Nay tao sa luyo! Nay tao sa luyo!” (There’s someone outside!). After hearing this, Ryam, who was yet to start defecating, pulled his pants up, hurriedly vacated the area and started to walk towards the side of the road. A certain PNP (Philippine National Police) P/INSP Salvador Castillon, Jr.(the husband of Anna Lynn B. Castillon) who was holding a police issued pistol, approached Ryam, accused him of maliciously peeping at his wife, pointed the gun at Ryam’s head, and punched him twice on the chest.
After some accusations, the police officer made Ryam kneel and put his hands behind his head in front of everyone who was watching the whole commotion.
After repeatedly asking forgiveness for the crime he claims he did not commit, Ryam was kicked on the chest by the policeman while repeatedly insisting that the 21-year old driver maliciously peeped at his wife. Salvador Castillon then asked a passing motorized sikad driver to verify the identity of Ryam upon which the driver readily identified Ryam as one of his fellow drivers.
After some questioning, the policeman grabbed Ryam’s shirt, pushed him into another passing motorized sikad and told him he is to be brought to Barra Opol Police Outpost. While on the way, the policeman repeatedly tried to make Ryam admit he peeped at the policeman’s wife but the latter insisted he was only there to relieve his stomach. In frustration, the policeman struck in the chest with his .45 caliber ACP gov’t issued firearm (Model 1911a).
According to Ryam, when arriving at the Barra Police Outpost while getting off the sikad, the angry policeman grabbed Ryam off the sikad, kicked him on the abdomen, and forced him into the outpost. At that moment, two officers were on duty; one policeman (PNP) and one barangay tanod (a deputized civilian). Investigation immediately followed and was put into blotter in which you can refer here for a photo of the police blotter or a transcribed copy of the police blotter here. When the interrogation was finally over, Castillon asked Ryam to remove his shirt, commanded him to turn around and exclaimed to everyone present, “There are no bruises on this guy’s body as you can see clearly”.
With everything calm and composed, Castillon made Ryam choose between being imprisoned, being hit with something (was not specified), or to cultivate the soil around the outpost. The under-privileged driver chose the last option. He got an old and rusty kitchen knife and got to work immediately pulling weeds while Castillon left the station. He cultivated the soil around the station for two hours until the on-duty policeman told him he was free. With everything over, the 21 year old driver went home walking, alone, feeling deprived of justice..
The facts stated above are according to the interview of Ryam Dugaduga Estojero by Philippine Attorney Joe Pallugna. You can refer here to listen to the 82 minute interview (I scrunched it down to only 19 MB, that’s the smallest my tools allow for, but that’s prettty small for an 82 minutes recording). The audio interview has been transcribed into Visayan text and is also available as a translated English version for you to verify its accuracy. If anyone finds any discrepancies of note between the actual recording and the written transcripts, please let me know so that I can correct the text versions.
This is the first post of a multi-part posting that will likely involve many postings, as I attempt to lay out the documentary evidence that will reveal the truth, and also, just how hard justice is to come by in this beautiful archipelago I now call “home”.
This is the first part of a multi-part series of posts I will make concerning these and similar matters which I hope will not embarass anyone, not any government agency in The Philippines, not anyone in particular. The Philippines is still a country in transition, a transition from Tribalism to Nationhood. A transition from strong-man-rule to codified law-and-order. Today, the Philippinies has both and neither. It is a country, a great county, in a state of transition, and I hope that my posts on such issues only serve to help the public interest.
Will the real Michael Turner please stand up?
Michael Turner, one of the most popular comic book artists of all time passed away on June 27th, 2008, at approximately 10:42 PM in Santa Monica, California, after an eight year battle with a rare form of cancer known as chondrosarcomoa, which is a cartilage-based tumor that effects most commonly the bones of the hip and pelvis or shoulder and chest.
Born in 1971, Michael Turner was 37 when he died.
Michael Turner did artwork for DC Comics, Marvel, and Top Cow. His artwork is largely credited for Witchblade becoming so popular.
To say that he was an exceptional artist is an understatement. Always humble and friendly, he was class act and a gentleman of the first degree.
Someone once explained to me that the good die young because they have proven they are ready for the kingdom of heaven, and that God allows those who are not so good to live longer in the hope they may show themselves to be worthy. In this sense, Michael Turner certainly led a life graced by God.
His art was also uniquely his own. Not quite realistic, and tinged with a hint of Anime, he created some of the sexist female characters to ever appear in comics, Especially, perhaps in the Fathom series.
Michael Turner founded his own publishing company, Aspen Comics (http://www.aspencomics.com/), in 2002, while continuing to work for major comics companies. He continued to develop Fathom at Aspen Comics, but only after having to fight over the copyrights to it for a year. He created a couple of other series at Aspen Comics, Iron Maiden, Soulfire, and Shrugged.
I am sure there are many Filipinos who are familiar with his art as comics are very popular here.
Michael Turner established himself with the Identity Crisis Series, and then began doing work on the JLA (Justice League of America, DC Comics) and also began negotiating with Marvel Comics. He landed the work with Marvel Comics, which meant really big money, but Marvel told him that if he took their contract he could only work for Marvel, Michael Turner would have to quit the JLA series for DC.
Michael says to the Marvel guy, “Okay, then I’m out. Deal’s off.” It takes some big cojones and a lot of self integrity to walk away from a deal like that, but that’s what he did, because he had made a promise to do the JLA work.
Marvel caved in, agreeing to let Michael Turner do artwork for other companies, and it was perhaps that moment, that kept promise, and the blessings that came from it that marked the man. He wasn’t just a great artist, he was a great man.
Michael Turner is also a pretty good-looking guy, but he’s not this Michael Turner. So,if you ever come to my house and see a lot of drawings on the wall with the name Michael Turner on the, you can rest assured, I’m not the one who drew them. The “other” Michael Turner” did that. I just printed them.
See my full photo gallery of Comic Book Artist Michael Turner here.
So, from one Michael Turner to another, may God rest your soul, and I hope to meet you on the other side, I just hope it’s not any time soon.
Maybe one of the reasons I like this Michael Turner Comics Artist so much is that many of his drawings look a lot like my wife, Marissa. Coca-cola body, pretty face, small nose, blood on her sword, like the one above.
I did not intend to cast a vote in this election, not two years ago, not a year ago, not 4 months ago.
I am a registered Libertarian, and generally I will vote Libertarian. But since Libertarians make up only a few percentage points of registered voters, then Libertarians are unlikely to make an impact on this election.
I am casting my vote for Obama. Not because I like Obama, but because he is the lessor of two evils.
I do not like some of the radicalism in Obama’s past.
I deeply admire McCain and his lifelong dedication to the ideals of America. McCain has the “Right Stuff”. That is, he had the right stuff until he appointed Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate. I admire Sarah Palin for several reasons, but for other reasons I strongly dissent to her being a potential president of the United States. Quite simply, she is not qualified.
McCain is not going to survive eight years as president. I don’t care that his mother is still alive and close to 100 years old. She has never been diagnosed with cancer and he has been more than once. When I see McCain on the TV he looks like he’s already been made-up for his casket.
McCain is a war hero. He is probably the most outspoken Republican against the politicians of George W. Bush. He’s served exemplary well as a U.S. Senator. But his pick of Palin as his running mate shows that he is not the “right stuff”. Had he picked Condoleezza Rice as his VP, then I would have voted for McCain. Condoleezza Rice is not only an African-American, she’s also a she, a woman. The one problem with her is that she is single. You put her in as President after McCain’s sure demise, and what do you expect from here? Celibacy for 8 years?
This woman has an IQ of close to 200. Sure, she’s been tarnished by working under the Bush Administration, but who hasn’t been? She’s black, she’s female, she has presidential credentials. If McCain had picked her as VP I would have voted for McCain.
Palin believes that dinosaurs and men (humans) walked the Earth at the same time. Homo Sapiens have been around for about 100,000 years. Dinosaurs have been extinct for about 65 million years.
Let me put it another way. Do we want a president, who has the nuclear launch codes, to be a fundamentalist, a creationist? Someone who is ignorant of real science and believes the Earth is no more than 6000 years old to be President of the USA?
So, she’s a fundamentalist Christian, a creationist. Does this disqualify her from the VP position? Yes, it does. Being stupid and by choice ignorant disqualifies a person, in my mind, from being President of the USA. If a person really believes that God created the World in 6 days, less than 6000 years ago, then that person should not be President. 150 years ago that might have been okay, but not today.
Barack Obama is a 32nd degree Mason. While I am not a mason, I know many masons myself, and I know that many of the founding fathers of the USA were Masons, and that there is a code of ethics that is instilled in Masons that is endemic to those involved in it. Presidents George Washington, William Taft, James Buchanon, James Polkr, Warren Harding, William McKinley, James Monroe, James Garfield, Gerald Ford, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Harry Truman, Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, Admiral Byrd, Ben Franklin, Patrick Henry “Give me liberty or give me death”, Jim Bowie (Alamo), Kit Carson, William Clark, Mark Twain, Ty Cobb, Buffalo Bill Cody, General Dolittle , Henry Ford, Senator Barry Goldwater, Astronauts Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, and Buzz Aldrin, and many other Americans of impeccable character were masons.
Supposedly William Shakespeare was a mason. Filipino national hero and Jose Rizal was a mason.
I cannot vote for McCain because I do not believe he will survive for 8 years, and the thought of Sarah Palin being in charge just revolting.
If you had told me 20 years ago that I would vote for a black man who is a Democrat for president I would have laughed in your face. I think General Colin Powell was right. It is time for a generational change, and Obama represents that change.