Personal Report on the July 6-8 2011 NPA Conference
Written and edited in 7/2011

Intro

I have written this general report which I edited to focus on the parts of the conference I did attend as well as my observations and thoughts on certain things. It's not a complete account of every presentation as I didn't attend all of them and my report doesn't go into extensive detail as that would require more time and space as well as context, so it is more of a brief outline of various events. I edited this report from my initial personal notes and later emails to Jno Cook. If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to contact me at my email address below.

Physics

Well I knew by reading the schedule that I wouldn't be able to understand a lot of the physics stuff so someone might say it was mostly a waste of time for me to be there, but actually I learned a lot in other contexts. I was sitting in the lounge and one older man said "If there are 400 theories then no one is going to agree" and "What about ether?" the other man he was talking to then started to explain aether. The same guys or another man said "Nobody knows anything" while another said "Well we do know some things."

Now I've known that in many fields of human study there are many hypothesis, theories, etc and people are still arguing as to what is true and will be as we continue to learn and discover more, so it's not that I was very surprised, but I thought it was interesting how mainstream science has so much wrong, but even here at the Npa conference which contains dissident and alternative views, there is still much chaos and disagreement as to what really works.

So basically all these scientists who are trying to explain the fundamental reality we live in can't agree upon the explanations for our reality, here and now in the 21st century. It is both sad and funny at the same time. I had mentioned to someone I met at the conference that I probably should brush up on the physics behind the plasma mythology because one has to defend the theory by a solid grounding in reality, but now even after the conference seeing all the various speakers and disagreements I had a temporary feeling that it might all be irrelevant in a certain context, which would take more explanation some other time.

Because the way I see it is this: fundamental reality -> physics explanations -> plasma physics -> plasma science -> plasma cosmology -> plasma geology, biology, etc -> plasma mythology -> human culture, psychology... Each area of insights when traced back must lead to a grounding in reality, otherwise they are hypothesis and speculation or a mix of that and partial truths. I had also said at one point that looking at the schedule, the conference looked like a "hodge podge mix of stuff."

Conference Day 1

So that was my basic takeaway from the physics angle. Next I'm just going to go through my brief notes (including funny stuff) about the speakers I managed to see and then the panels. I thought the first intro "The Convergence of New Physics Paradigms: Unity in Diversity" by Greg Volk was great, he was enthusiastic and I wish he had more time to explain each area of study and how they interconnected - it seems like that would have been the most important talk and would have been great as a fully expanded closing talk as a summary.

The "A New Approach to Mountain Formation" talk by Michael Steinbacher I felt he made up by enthusiasm and he said he was open to talking with people at the end as he "was desperate" to find answers.

I thought "Towards a History of Plasma-Universe Theory" by Rens van der Sluijs was pretty good, although the last paragraph about abstract art forms as a result of World War traumas was only a few sentences and that would need to be explained a lot more probably in it's own paper, so I think that was just a general idea and not an absolute reality for all the artists involved.

The two "earth as the center of the universe" talks were "dumb" for me to sit through and I don't know why I did, the schedule was changed at various points and I was looking for something to sit in on. But as I mentioned above in my paragraph about physics, the inclusion of these two silly ideas kind of puts the whole Npa stance into question. Even Greg Volk admitted during the religious one that this was the furthest the Npa had gone in hosting such a viewpoint (I'm paraphrasing his words) - so I don't know why they were included here if those ideas are considered incorrect.

Robert Sungenis, the guy who gave the religious oriented "Cosmological Evidence Shows Central and Non-Moving Earth" talk, said that he wasn't going to talk religion inside the room but if anyone was interested he would do so right out the nearest door, and that his theory proved that "god exists and he's in control of everything." I said later to Kees that if they could have such far-out "earth as center of the universe" stuff, then for sure Jno Cook could present some of his work.

Conference Day 2

One the second day during "The Essential Guide to the Electric Universe", Jim Johnson calls David Talbott "Bob Talbott" by accident in his talk and David laughs.

Then after lunch I thought Michael Gmirkin's "The Sun-Earth Connection (and Other Considerations)" was good, but I found Ev Cochrane's talk "Ancient Testimony for a Comet-like Venus" wasn't so great because of the font problems, no plasma visuals of the planets to compare to the stone inscriptions thus the audience was partially lost or in disagreement, and his inclusion of half a dozen random mythological motifs at the end without any grounding or in-depth explanation. He did mention he was tired of explaining things in defense after 30 years, but that's not an excuse to put on a sloppy presentation especially since it was the first in conjunction with the Npa. Ev was the one who initially joked "I will now address the 100 reasons Ellenberger has against the EU," referring to an email Leroy Ellenberger had sent out to people before the conference.

Dwardu Cardona was next with "Earth's Primeval Polar Heat" and he denied anything saturn-related at the end until people humorously said it themselves. After some laughs he yelled out "David!" I guess he was looking for Talbott's approval before mentioning saturn.

Laurent Hollo gave his talk "The Organizational Structure of Physics" which I didn't understand most of what he was saying because I'm physics-deficient, but I grasped his overall concept mentally about trying to organize physics. He was very passionate, honest, and thorough in his presentation so what I missed intellectually I picked up otherwise so it sounds like he had a good idea.

The next talk upstairs was Viktor Moroz on "The Vicious Circle: Mathematics - Physics" which I attended but it was hard to understand his thicker Ukrainian accent, but he had some good points about mathematics being abstractions which create problems in physics.

Next was Charles Sven's "Center of the Universe Located by Triangulation of NASA Data" which I commented on above in the Day 1 comments.

Then there was David de Hilster downstairs who presented in his own words his "angry paper about neutrinos" not existing, but the next day Wal Thornhill mentioned neutrinos in his concluding talk so once again we have opposing viewpoints in the Npa.

Conference Day 3

On the last day I was late and missed Peter Marquardt's "A Distant View of Physics" which looked interesting and "True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes" by Manhin and Helen Look-Yat Taylor which apparently tries to come up with a system for predicting the next ice ages, etc in cycles but since we know of the solar system's catastrophic past then this would seem difficult to even try to predict bearing that knowledge in mind.

David Talbott's two talks "Considering the Electric Sun" and "Electric Events on Mars" and Wal Thornhill's final talk "Stars in an Electric Universe (2011 John Chappell Memorial Paper)" seemed like they were good but nothing new, perhaps they were just the usual general talks for conferences that they have been doing and were not meant to contain all the latest revelations and perhaps hidden ideas. Maybe they haven't gotten some good marketing as has been suggested but they did have the announcer guy A.P. David who introduced everybody which I don't think was really necessary.

Conference Day 2 - The Two Thunderbolts Team Panels 7pm-10pm

Panel 1: Science

The 1st science panel was left to right: Bob Johnson, Jim Johnson, Wal Thornhill, David Talbott, Tom Findlay, and Michael Gmirkin

Now about the panel, which was the night before. Ev was absent for both panels, don't know why, David said he wasn't there.

Some questions were if they had 2 billion dollars how would they spend it and how they would change the space instruments, one man asked about the stability of the solar system to which Wal replied that the neighboring stars must be observed and that someone he knew told him that "everything looked peaceful." I don't know much about the science but I'm not so sure, as others have written about the instability of our solar system. Wal also said confidently that "cold fusion is the future" as an energy source after an ex-nuclear industry man asked about a better energy source. Wal also mentioned that the electric universe was a "positive thing" and that "we are all part of it."

At one point a man asked about personal experiences of the panel members, of which not one of them actually answered that question directly and rambled on about other electric universe topics. Eventually, Bob Johnson said "I believe the question was about personal experiences" and he mentioned briefly how Velikovsky's wife played the violin beautifully. So it seems at a few points Talbott veered away from the actual questions, I don't know why, and the same thing happened later in the second panel.

Panel 2: Mythology

The 2nd panel was left to right: Michael Steinbacher, Steve Smith, Wall Thornhill, Dave Talbott, Dwardu Cardona, Rens van der Sluijs

I think I was speaking my thoughts too loud in the audience as they were setting up because later in the panel some weird things happened which I will get to soon. Ok so then the second panel started after a question by announcer A.P. David - is the panel more focused on science or myth? David Talbott said both were important, and that eventually the biological aspects were going to become more known, as well as the mythology, and will offer a chance for reconciliation among people and various religions.

Then things got a little more sour. I noticed Steve Smith was sitting there with either a very serious or partially aggressive look towards us in the audience, he was staring at me or us or in our direction and didn't looked pleased or positive at all. He then said that something had to have happened to the ancients because "they sacrificed their children and wore the skins of people" - which was true and a pretty "shocking" way to kick off the panel. I can't remember if he mentioned this before or after David's positive reconciliation message. Steve then at point made this statement: "There is not a single person on the planet who knows more about the mythology than this panel (group?) right here." -- This is pretty much a direct quote, which he said very sternly, authoritatively, and which was burned into my mind. I wrote to Jno Cook: "I'm going to analyze and go ahead and guess that he obviously meant to put down you and his work by such a statement. So he may have been indirectly referring to you at that moment, or perhaps us he was giving me bad looks so maybe he thought I was a threat? So I find his statement very bold, and perhaps very arrogant - obviously there are people who know more, such as yourself, and how can Steve indeed speak for the whole planet?"

I can't offer any conclusive data on my guesses, but if someone like Jno Cook exists, then there has to be at least one other person or group somewhere in there world, maybe in another country speaking another language that knows something. One would guess that places like Japan and China must certainly have someone there. I have also speculated that it's possible there might be some government/military/etc groups that may have partial knowledge or ideas but don't share it with the public, this is certainly a possibility. I wasn't scared by Steve's behavior, but I was nervous and I decided not to go up and ask my question for a variety of reasons, one was that by their behavior I could tell they probably didn't know more about the psychological aspects of plasma cosmology and catastrophism.

But just to reproduce my question if I asked it, it would have went like this: "Hello, my question is more about the psychological aspects of the electric universe and related fields like plasma cosmology, catastrophism and plasma mythology. I'm familiar with the works Homo Schizo 1 and 2 by Alfred de Grazia and Mankind in Amnesia by Velikovsky which Wal had mentioned earlier, as well as some other writers and some writing here and there by the Thunderbolts group. I have searched online and at libraries for more works from a psychological standpoint but there doesn't seem to be that much and it doesn't seem anyone picked up where Velikovsky left off and has written any major books in recent decades on these subjects. I was curious if you know of any writers, psychologists, psychoanalysts, etc who have either already published some work or if you have been contacted by any psychologists from various countries around the world in regards to your work; and if so, where might those of us who are interested in such work be able to find it?"

A second-part question would have been asking about the cultural aspects and if any musicologists, architects, etc have written anything or contacted them.

Steve Smith also said that reading Worlds in Collision by Velikovsky was a "life changing experience" which was peculiar because I had mentioned the same in a conversation before the panel, maybe he overheard my big mouth and was nervous that I was going to ask my question which I also mentioned, maybe not. Dwardu Cardona and Rens van der Sluijs speculated on if humans were generally peaceful before the catastrophic events, Dwardu said he couldn't find art images of humans hunting other humans and that he had looked for them. Steve Smith also mentioned funding as a problem, they need an institute for their work, and money. At one point David Talbott couldn't turn the microphone on and someone in the audience said or joked "he can explain the universe but can't turn the microphone on" as Wal fixed it. When David gave the microphone to Wal to fix, someone from the audience also said "it's the gods!" (causing the microphone problem, or some other technical issue) and then Dwardu was funny, he made a funny bowing down appeasement to the gods gesture with his arms which made me smile.

Again David Talbott veered away from a question, this time about about geology. Michael Steinbacher had said that all of the geologists he talked to wouldn't accept his ideas and work. A man who had a question said that we can drive to the formations with our cars to do our own work and asked what can we do, to which David starting talking about geological formations on mars and other topics instead of directly answering him. Rens also had mentioned students with phds could help translate texts for 3 to 4 years for use.

After the 2nd panel ended, an older man in the audience got up and started to speak and he said: "I've been following the work of these people for the past 40, 50 years and they have solved the greatest mass murder mystery, but the statute of limitations has run out so to speak, thank you anyway..." something along those lines and people laughed and clapped, I thought it was strange and funny in a good way but he had a point. There was a lot of photo taking and videotaping going on, some interviews for a documentary maybe, I forgot to ask.

Concluding Thoughts

So that pretty much wraps up my notes, my general summary of the whole experience is that it's important to remember everyone there was a minority among the world. "Mainstream anything" seems to dominate any field of human endeavor, so the Npa conference was a minority group of dissidents of various sorts that are against the majority group of the status quo. Within this minority exist other minorities, such as the electric universe group, various physicists, the religious minded people, and various others. We may dismiss the religious "earth as center of the universe" views while the Npa may be trying to do good by being inclusive, but this is a waste of time and I humbly think they should spend it on trying to synthesize the fields of physics which admittedly I know not much about because it's hard to grasp for certain people.

Among these scientists there are hundreds of theories worldwide and many disagree thus it seems a "holistic synthesis" may never happen, which is why I appreciate Laurent Hollo's presentation for although I'm speaking out of my league and might be wrong, his summary is: "Although each area of physics is known and codified in the form of a specific system of equations, the lack of standardization prevents us from recognizing the common underlying organizational structure of physical interactions. This paper explores the possibility that all areas of physics share a common operating mechanism and presents a formalization of their inner working." So the physics part of things seemed mixed up to me and in need of organizing as Laurent pointed out.

The electric universe panel on mythology seemed arrogant and authoritative on one hand, generalized for the public and ambiguous as usual on the other. I didn't see any evidence for hidden ideas, but it could have been part of their strategy to keep silent about saturnian stuff and just gloss over the conference and panel in a "public relations" kind of way. Their presentations were general which is fine, but it seems like their work at the conference was "just another usual conference" and not a place or opportunity to delve into more deeper or hidden information, basically just more publicity for their group. Meanwhile those of us who know more or desire more are still left lingering in the dark or neglect. Steve Smith made the most arrogant and "final word" statement about their group being the most knowledgeable about mythology, and David veered off-subject when people asked some questions and instead he talked more about other discoveries.

So I guess the word is out: our neighboring stars look peaceful, pre-catastrophe humans seemed to be peaceful, cold fusion is the future as an energy source, the Thunderbolts group knows the most about mythology on the entire planet, the mythology presents a chance for "reconciliation" among peoples but there can be no reconciliation between the Thunderbolts team and other researchers like Jno Cook, and what they didn't say said a lot as well.

Alex K contactfepw@ymail.com