John Ratcliff's Weblog

I just finished reading all of Dr. Steven Greer's book titled 'Hidden Truth : Forbidden Knowledge' and I feel like I owe the man a bit of an apology. Let me say first and foremost that I think Dr. Steven Greer is probably a really nice fellow. I'm sorry if my posts containing extreme sarcasm motivated by my penchant for rationalism caused him any personal discomfort. Having read all of Dr. Greer's quite personal book I now feel like I understand him a bit better. At the end of the day Dr. Greer is just one of your warm and fuzzy New Age types and, gosh darn it, I love New Age type people. Even though my rational mind objects I can't escape the fact that they are often more pleasant, warm, entertaining, and delightful to have as friends than your average person. At first when I was reading Dr. Greer's book I felt like grabbing a highlighter and marking passages so I could write a scathing blog post about it. What better way to prove my point than using h...

I just finished my first issue of the new MoDeMolay E-Newsletter. In the past I was working on a newsletter just for our chapter of DeMolay. You can see our last issue here . It turns out that the executive officers for the State were impressed by our newsletter and asked me to become the 'Director of Communications' for the State wide newsletter. So, for the past several weeks I have been working on this rather huge project. I figure most of the work is getting the first two issues together and then, after that, things will be fairly boiler-plate. I do have the assistance of the state scribe to help me as well. Unless the individual chapters get involved and submit their own content, I won't be updating the basic template of the newsletter all that often. It was certainly a lot of work to put this thing together but I do have a real sense of accomplishment now that it is done. I have been putting this newsletter together with a piece of desktop publishing software ...

This post is a reprint of a rant. Actually, what I was originally planning to do was to write a brand new lemon freshened rant. However, as I began, I remembered that I had already ranted on this topic ten years ago. I did a quick search on the Internet and, sure enough, there was my old rant just sitting there waiting to be resurrected. I used to be interested in UFOs, heck, I guess I still am. That is, if the UFOs would ever do anything interesting. But, really, they don't. And now with the kind of advanced video editing software and photo-imaging tools available it is literally impossible to ever know if anything is 'real' or 'fake' any more. The best you can do is either (A) see a UFO for yourself or (B) believe somebody who tells you a UFO story. That's about all there is to it. No real proof one way or another until the UFOs end their cover-up. I don't know why, but I picked up a book titled 'Hidden Truth - Forbidden Knowledge ' by Dr....

As I have mentioned before, at my job I have a lot of cases where I have to wait on my computer. Usually this is performing a compile and link operation, which can take from one to five minutes; sometimes even a bit longer. You can't really do much other work while this is happening. Sure, you can check you email, if there is something new to review, but most of the time you are just waiting. In a minute or two, you can't really work on another project, the mental shift of trying to go from one to the other usually just doesn't work. I've tried various one minute time killer strategies, like YouTube or browsing bookmarked websites, but I have now discovered the two greatest time-killers ever created for the Internet. And, no real surprise, they both come from Google. I know, maybe I'm just a little bit late to catch onto these things, but I have to say both of these products are able to transform the online experience. The first is 'Google Reader' . Goo...

When I was much younger I used to read a lot more philosophy than I do today. Along the way I seem to recall reading some literature about Utopian Societies. I don't recall all of the details but I kind of think the theme was about a society that was so far advanced that no one 'had' to work. There are a number of ways we could achieve a Utopian Society and, in many ways, we are getting closer all of the time. Of course, this is not true everywhere in the world, but it is certainly the case in many places. I am thinking of the number of jobs we have created that are 'information' based and don't involve any association with actually creating a physical good or product. Since I have greatly benefited personally from this new form of employment, the information worker, I am especially thankful. My first jobs were working as a farm hand, a janitor, and a factory worker, so even today I really appreciate the fact that I get paid a healthy salary, primarily jus...

What's happening to our critical thinking skills? About a week or so ago a story broke about a man who had figured out a way to 'burn water'. What made this odd is that it was widely reported as 'news' and was promoted with all of the restraint of a lead story for the National Enquirer. Here is a typical 'news' story. And here is a typical YouTube 'news' story. Maybe I'm the one who is mistaken here, but let me make an observation and ask a few questions. First of all, the water is not burning. Water does not burn. Hydrogen and Oxygen mixed together will, however, burn quite well. So, to clarify the first mistake in reporting, the man is not burning water, he is burning hydrogen and oxygen, which is produced via electrolysis. Now, this is certainly nothing new, so I"m kind of surprised it merited such coverage. Is it because the inventor did it without using any wires? That seems to be the case. According to the basic claim the invent...

From left to right, Right Worshipful Brother Russ Tinker, Worshipful Brother John W. Ratcliff, Right Worshipful Brother Fred Statler, Jr and Worshipful Brother Tommy Hamlet. Katie Solomon Part of the mural in the grand lobby of the New Masonic Temple My wife Terry and myself in front of the George Washington statue. With my son Alex Alex and I in front of an impressive Masonic statue My daughter Lauren and I. My Dad and my daughter. Myself in front of the Temple Dad, Alex and I Dad, Alex, and I On the steps of the Temple The front of the Temple building. Today I was installed as the Worshipful Master of Napthali Lodge #25. This is my first time as master and it was a great ceremony. My installing team included Right Worshipful Brother Russ Tinker, Right Worshipful Brother Fred Statler, Jr and Worshipful Brother Tommy Hamlet. I was especially pleased to have my wife, son and daughter there as well as my Dad. A number of friends came downtown as well. Once I was installed I gave a spe...

Literally unbelievable. I made a post about comedian Craig Ferguson about a week ago. Since then I set my Tivo to record a season pass for the show and have watched a week of repeat episodes. In so doing, I caught a number of his older episodes and confirmed that, yes, it wasn't a fluke, he is a genuinely a very funny guy who would give John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Steve Carrel a run for their money (simultaneously). Last night all three shows returned from vacation and all three shows were equally entertaining. Tonight, however, was something different. Craig Ferguson is currently trying to become an American Citizen. As it often seems to happen, those who are seeking citizenship to this great nation are much more informed, patriotic, and inspired than the average native citizen. (Cynicism has not yet sunk in...) Since today is the anniversary of the attack of '9-11' Craig decided it was inappropriate to do a comedy sketch about Brittany Spears and her less than perf...

After receiving a lovely plaque at State Conclave acknowledging our newsletter I felt so bad about not getting a new one out until now. First I had my vacation and that just really consumed me for all of June and July. I have been working on this newsletter in bits and pieces for several weeks now and I am glad to see that it is finally done. Here is the link. I really try to treat it as much like a photo album as anything else. If you don't really know what DeMolay is about I encourage you to take a look at this newsletter. When you see the genuine fun these young people are having, all of the time in a healthy and wholesome atmosphere, you just feel amazement that an organization like this can thrive in our current culture. In just a couple of weeks my own son will compete to become the next Moolah Shrine King. He gets to escort a young lady from the Rainbow for Girls and get all dressed up in a tuxedo. There will be dinner and a dance and a lot of fun. The Moolah Shrine...

As I mentioned in my previous post, with photographs, my daughter spent this weekend creating a 'techno' video to show at her Halloween party on Saturday October 20th at our home. Even though she had never used the new piece of editing software I bought, I think she did an excellent job. The video compression artifacts on YouTube are just terrible so it's kind of hard to really tell what it is all about, but she will be broadcasting the high-resolution version on using my DLP projector at her party. Here is a Google Video version, which is of much higher quality. What is weird is, last I checked, it says it is 'not currently available'. I'm not sure why, hopefully it will be back online soon. If you have the time, interest, and bandwidth, here is a link to a higher resolution version in Windows Media format .

I got a phone call on my way home from work yesterday evening. It seems my daughter wanted to use my video camera to create a 'techno video' for her upcoming Halloween party. I didn't know what all that entailed but since I carry my camera with me, I assured her I would be home right away. About two minutes after I got off of that phone call, suddenly traffic came to a halt. I had just passed the Mid Rivers Mall drive exit and was, in fact, almost beneath the overpass when this happened. No worries I thought, this will clear up soon enough. Once I had been sitting there for a few minutes I knew there must be an accident up ahead. As firetrucks, ambulances, and police cars, zoomed past on the shoulder it became quite clear it must have been a major accident. I waited with some level of patience at first. I pulled out my Archos 604, propped it up on the dash, and finished watching a movie I had been in the middle of before. After about 40 minutes I started to really begin to ...