What Musicians Should Carry at all Times

As a working indie musician, you’re frequently on the go. But even when you aren’t gigging and maybe enjoying some down time, you’re never really off the clock, because you never know who you’re going to run into. When you work for yourself doing what you love it means you should always be prepared to switch into networking mode at any time, be it in an airport lounge Bangkok, or hanging out in a club down the street. There are some things you should never leave home without.

An over-the-shoulder bag

You’ll need a comfortable, nice bag to sling over your shoulder, in order to carry all the things listed below.

Business cards

These aren’t to give out to fans but to exchange with music biz people that you’re networking with for gigs, etc. When someone hands you a business card, you should be able to hand yours back. It’s proper etiquette. The cards should have your full contact info, including a mailing address and a website. Vistaprint.com is a good website for picking designs and ordering affordable, decent-looking business cards.

Promo cards 

These are postcard-sized fliers to hand out to fans. Don’t put your phone number or a street address on these, just a promo pic, your website and social networking sites, along with any upcoming releases and/or gigs.

Press kit

When you run into a member of the press, a radio personality or promoter who may be interested in your act, you should have a press kit handy in your bag. You can just hand it off (ask permission first) instead of mailing it. If all you have is an electronic press kit (EPK), include a link to it on your business card. Or, ask for an email address to email them your EPK.

Thumb drives

It’s becoming more common for acts to put press kits and mp3s on thumbnail drives. These should be given to industry professionals, not the general public.

CD's

Always keep a handful of your CD's on hand to give out to industry folks, sell to fans or drop off for consignment sales should you happen upon a cool, indie-friendly record store.

Earphones

You’re a musician, so you should always be checking out new music wherever you go. Having a good pair of earphones allows you to be polite and keep the music to yourself in public spaces and cramped quarters with others, such as in an airplane cabin.

A smart phone

If your phone is smart, it makes your professional life a lot easier. Having access to the world of apps, the internet and other features when you’re on the road is immensely helpful to musicians. For example, let’s say you’re onstage, the electronic tuner dies and you can’t tune by ear. There’s an app for that. In fact, there are many tuning apps for that.

A pen and notepad

Because sometimes your smart phone dies and you need to write something important down without powering something else up.

An extra cord/cable/guitar picks

It could be a power cord for a keyboard or a guitar cable. Or picks. These are things that often go bad or get lost and can easily fit in a knapsack.

Now, you’re ready to leave the house. But don’t forget your instrument!

  A Guest Post by SongCastMusic.com

When I Look at Candy, All I See Is Petrochemicals and GMO

‘I’ve seen it all over Facebook. PETA is sharing a picture of candy that illustrates exactly where the gelatin in much of it comes from — and person after person after person in the comments is talking about how “amazing” all these processed candies are and how they don’t really care at all where their “food” comes from.

PETA is right on this, for the record. Not only is that exactly where non-vegetarian gelatin comes from (the majority in America is said to come from pig skins, but it can also come from other animals including cows and fish), but its production has been known to be somewhat…inconsistent to say the very least.

But that’s not even the point. People were clamoring over themselves to talk about how they “don’t care” what’s in candy, they just love it. I don’t know how many comments I read with the words “don’t care” and some quip about how they were going to run out and get some candy right now!’

 Apparently candy companies could literally piss in these people’s candy and they’d be fine with it if it tasted the way they expect it to.

Regardless of one’s stance on PETA, the attitude of not caring where our food comes from is part of why giant corporations are able to give even less of a sh*t about what they put in our food. They know very well that the blissfully ignorant masses just don’t care, so they can totally get away with it.

The truth is, I don’t even see candy anymore when I look at that picture, or really, when I look at most conventional candy packages at the grocery store. You know what I see?

GMO sugar beets and dextrose from GMO corn, both courtesy of Monsanto, a company that produces and sells poison for profit.

Modified soy protein that likely also started there, but because it is in its “modified” state, it could also be a hidden name for MSG, a potent neurotoxin and excitotoxin.

High fructose corn syrup, (which we can’t even really say is “fine in moderation” like the propaganda commercials try to reassure us it is because HFCS is in so many things, it’s hard to avoid let alone moderate) that is probably made in a chlor alkali plant with mercury cell technology because we still have those here, meaning it’s likely tainted with the neurotoxic heavy metal mercury.

Artificial colors dyes made of coal tar, aka nothing more than a byproduct of the petroleum industry. Things that are banned in other countries because they cause behavioral problems in children are in the majority of foods which are MARKETED to children here (like candy, cereals, snacks, cheap sugary drinks etc). Some have caused tumors in lab studies.

 I also recently learned that some well-known, popular chocolate pudding mixes not only contain no real chocolate, but if they did not contain artificial colours, they would actually be green instead of the expected brown.

Artificial flavors made of random chemical mixtures as well.

Natural colours could mean things like carmine — a red colouring that is actually created by boiling tens of thousands of female cochineal insect shells in a vat of ammonia or sodium bicarbonate solution. Starbucks took a lot of heat when it came to light a few years back that the coffee giant was using carmine to colour its strawberry frappuccino drinks (you know, instead of…actual strawberries).


Natural flavors aren’t necessarily healthier just because they use the word “natural” in the name. “All natural” on a label doesn’t mean jack in this country. Castoreum is a “natural” raspberry flavouring used regularly in the food supply…and that stuff is made from beaver anal secretions.

Yummy, right?

Vanilla extract isn’t just vanillin, the primary component of the vanilla bean, but vanillin mixed with several hundred different compounds. Pure vanillia is scarce, and thus, expensive. Demand worldwide far outweighs supply. For some people, vanillin and artificial vanilla have triggered allergic reactions and caused migraines.

The “confectioner’s glaze” sometimes called shellac that is used on many hard candies is literally made of the feces of the female lac bug. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. Again, all natural!

Propylene glycol, produced by Dow Chemical Company and others, isn’t just a plasticizer and chemical solvent that’s well-known as the main ingredient in antifreeze, but it’s also allowed as a food additive in America, and Americans eat it in tons of products on our grocery store shelves, although like other items on this list, it is not cleared as a general-purpose food grade ingredient or direct food additive in the European Union (meaning it’s banned there).

Or how about soy lecithin? That stuff is in everything these days. Not only is it made of GMO soy, but the process used to extract it involves harsh chemicals like acetone and hexane, a neurotoxic chemical solvent and jet fuel additive which can cause nerve damage with long-term inhalation exposure.

There’s even a video on it from the Cornucopia Institute:

Yes, hexane is another lovely byproduct of gasoline refineries, and it has been surmised that the hexane-extraction process may be the leading reason why soy baby formulas have been found to cause terrible irritation to the linings of some baby’s stomachs. While the CDC recognizes hexane as a neurotoxin and the EPA declares it to be a “hazardous air pollutant,” here in America, that apparently means it’s just fine to eat it.

(Oh, and even though an organic version of soy lecithin has been available since 2004, and the National Organic Standards Board could have voted to dump conventional soy lecithin, instead the board voted to keep the dry version of soy lecithin on the allowed substances National List in 2009, so even organics with the certified seal can still include hexane-extracted conventional soy lecithin in their products as well.)


The list goes on and on…potentially carcinogenic preservatives like BHT and BHA. Caramel colouring that just might contain a known cancer-causing byproduct called 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) which government studies have shown “caused lung, liver, or thyroid cancer or leukemia in laboratory mice or rats.” That’s why 4-MEI is on California’s list of chemicals known to cause cancer!

And you can barely even buy a gum without the excitotoxin aspartame in it…but aspartame is a whole separate report by itself. (I know. I’ve written several. Here’s one now.)

SIGH.

Again, let’s be clear: we no longer live in a country where you look at a food item and what you see is all it is.

Far from it.

A burger patty probably isn’t just a burger patty made from nothing but “100% beef”. Consumers have to also consider what that cow ate (GMO corn? GMO soy? Trash? Candy?) on top of the cow’s treatment as it was raised.

Think about it. You release stress hormones when you are upset. These can wreak havoc on your body, especially if you are under chronic stress. Animals release similar hormones and when they live in the places many animals are raised in in this country, you better believe they are releasing hormones. And then…what? You eat all that stress and trauma? Can’t be good. Many animals are raised in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) in America. I’ve personally visited a few of these places and I can tell you, it’s a horror you just have to witness for yourself. Those places are like animal concentration camps. On top of that, you’ve got all the pharmaceuticals administered to the livestock in this country…arsenic to make chickens fat…antibiotics to cows for the same reason (and to fight off diseases due to the nasty way they are being raised)…things that make cow’s hooves fall off…it’s just unreal.

And we’re eating it!

Our food is highly centralized in this country. About ten mega corporations own almost all the brands you’ll find on the average grocery store shelf:

It’s sad we live in a day-and-age where a person is expected to get a freakin’ chemistry degree just to go to the grocery store and understand what’s listed on their food labels, but we can’t just wait around for the government to protect us from …well, from our food. They haven’t so far. Hell, they can’t even protect themselves.

But reading that PETA picture comments section was more than just disheartening. It’s further proof that we’re all so disconnected from what’s on the end of our forks, most people have absolutely no idea what they’re even putting in their mouths in this country.

Well, we all need to get right with that, and soon. Hippocrates once said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. We don’t do that anymore. Sickness is rising fast in this country. Food allergies (gluten intolerance, anyone?), autoimmune diseases, diabetes, obesity…all going up and up and up. The government has announced it expects the rates of cancer to double in the U.S. by 2050 — and cancer is already off-the-charts now!

People need to snap out of it and put down that fork for a sec. Not caring about how our food was produced or what’s in it is simply no longer an option anymore.

(Originally published at Nutritional Anarchy.)

Melissa Melton is a co-founder of TruthstreamMedia.com. She is an experienced researcher, graphic artist and investigative journalist with a passion for liberty and a dedication to truth. Her aim is to expose the New World Order for what it is — a prison for the human soul from which

By David Icke

• Posted in:
• Corporate Crime
• Illuminati Criminals
• Medical/Health

• Tagged:
• candy
• GMO
• PETA
• petrochemicals

Savage Babes & Bikes #15

It is time to post my continuing and most popular blog! Vroom...

 

 

Bands & Musicians: The Top 5 Ways To Get Noticed in Today’s Music Industry

 

1) Write and record stellar music

This one goes without saying, but if your songs aren't (at a minimum) catchy, provocative, unique, and meticulously recorded, then you need to invest as much time and effort as it takes to get them that way.  The days of getting picked up by record labels on the basis of extremely low-budget demo recordings are pretty much over.  So you basically need suck it up and spend some cash.  Speaking of which….

2) Manage your finances effectively
It’s pretty much common knowledge that record labels no longer have huge stacks of money to invest in “artist development.”  This means that you absolutely must manage your music career like you are running a business, watching your cash flow very carefully and keeping yourself in the black.  Artists who fail to demonstrate responsibility and discipline in financial matters will simply get passed over by the labels.  Period.  Bottom line—you need to resist the urge to live the rock star lifestyle until you've got the bank to support it.

3) Play lots of gigs
The benefits of playing out on a regular basis are numerous.  First of all, it helps to improve your musicianship through practice & repetition, forcing you to perform well under pressure.  Secondly, it helps you to establish and refine your brand, personality, songwriting, and unique sound.  Thirdly, it will help improve your charisma and social skills because you’ll be constantly fielding comments and questions from fans.  And lastly but certainly not at least, it will put money in your pocket, which of course helps with #2 above.

4) Develop and streamline your social media presence
In today’s all-digital music industry, this is an absolute must. You need to have a solid social media marketing plan in order to reach the maximum number of people and get as many ears on your music as possible.  So how do you do you go about developing such a plan?  I'm so glad you asked.  :)  Here are a few tips:

1. Create consistent and professional-looking branding.  Unless you’re super-handy with Photoshop and/or Illustrator, bite the bullet and hire a graphic designer.
2. Design an eye-catching (but tasteful) Twitter background, YouTube Channel, and Facebook page using your custom branding.  
3. Upload your music to sites like ReverbNation, SoundCloud, and the BandPage app on Facebook, and promote it on all of your other social media channels
4. Create (and stick to) a regular posting/tweeting schedule to remain “top of mind” with your fans.  Keep them informed of your upcoming shows, share pics & videos, and occasionally share off-topic items that you think they’ll enjoy.
5. Set weekly goals for increasing your following, and constantly engage with fans.  Never let a question or comment go unacknowledged.
6. Remember that achieving success with social media is a journey, not a destination.

And finally, we arrive at the most important tool in your arsenal when it comes to getting noticed in today’s music industry….

5) Get some truly amazing promotional photos
Time and time again, the first thing that potential fans (or talent scouts, venue managers, or even <gasp> A&R reps) will see typically see when they come across your stuff for the very first time are your photos.  Make a great impression, and chances are good that the person in question will bother to click your link, rummage through your press kit, or <gasp> actually listen to your music.  
Right or wrong, we all “judge a book by its cover” from time to time, so it’s no surprise that people will instantly make certain assumptions about you based solely on the quality and impact of your promotional photos.  It doesn't matter if you spent eleven billion dollars on your album— if nobody’s listening to it because your pictures suck, then for all intents and purposes, you do too.

You might literally only have 2 seconds to catch someone’s eye, and bear in mind that in today’s caffeine-fuelled world of 140-character status updates, there will always be countless other things competing for that same sliver of attention.  So the bottom line is that, when given a chance, you better make it count.  As the great lyricist Eminem said, “you only get one shot, do NOT miss your chance to glow.”

Are Your Facebook Referrals On The Rise?

There has been a lot of discussion about Facebook killing the organic reach of posts that Pages make, essentially forcing businesses to pay to actually get their messages viewed in the News Feed. Many have considered dropping their Facebook strategy altogether, and one Page made a lot of headlines when it actually did. Despite this organic reach drop-off, Facebook appears to be driving more traffic to sites than ever.

Facebook has always been about sharing, and that’s really what needs to happen now for sites to see traffic from the social network. Chances are you’re not going to get very much if you’re just pushing your own content out on your Facebook Page. The traffic is going to come from people finding your content, and then sharing it with their friends.

Shareaholic has released its Q1 2014 Social Media Traffic Report. The data comes from over 300,000 sites reaching over 400 million unique monthly visitors from December through March.
Facebook referrals have grown by 5.81 percentage points since December with 21.25% of the overall traffic sent to sites, according to the report.


This continues a trend that has been happening for a while. Late last year, Shareaholic looked at Facebook’s share of overall visits from November 2012 to November 2013:


“While brands enjoy hating on Facebook for limiting the reach of Pages and then forcing businesses to pay for ads, Facebook still continues to refer loads of traffic to websites when users share links they enjoy with all of their friends,” says Shareaholic’s Danny Wong. “Though, last month, Eat24 caused a ruckus because it initiated a 'breakup' with Facebook, brands will never be bold enough to actually prevent users from 'liking' or 'sharing' things from their sites to Facebook. Eat24′s popular breakup letter received more than 26k Facebook likes and shares. While most brands may have lost faith in their Fan Pages, they know the world's largest social network will still bless them with tons of organic traffic.”

“Facebook users love to — or can't help but — click links on their feed,” he says.
The data appears to validate Facebook’s own strategy. People are clicking on the links they’re actually seeing more and more. That’s of little consolation to businesses who have a hard time getting there in the first place, but it does appear to be the case.

In case you’re wondering what kinds of sites the data is analyzing, Wong says the network is “well diversified, with sites ranging from independent lifestyle blogs to publishing companies to commerce sites.”

Pinterest came in second in referrals behind Facebook, growing by 48% (2.31 percentage points since December. Twitter is number three, but StumbleUpon is gaining on it, growing by 4.91% (0.13 percentage points) during the quarter.

Interestingly, YouTube’s share dropped by over half (52%) over the quarter, though according to another report from Shareaholic, it dominates when it comes to post-click engagement on sites. In that report, Facebook didn’t do so hot, so make of that what you will. How much are these Facebook referrals really helping sites?


For average pages per visit, Facebook was below Twitter and LinkedIn, and well below Google+ and YouTube. It still beat out Pinterest, reddit, and StumbleUpon. Average bounce rate was identical to Twitter and Pinterest, and higher than LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube. Reddit was the highest, closely followed by StumbleUpon. For average time on site, Facebook was slightly higher than Twitter, but not as high as LinkedIn, and not even close to as high as Google+ or YouTube.

Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Nate Elliott recently wrote, "On average, top brands have collected 90% as many fans on Plus as on Twitter (In fact, the brands we studied have more followers on Google Plus than on YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram combined.)," he writes. "Second, and more importantly, Google Plus generates much more brand engagement than you think. Recently we studied more than 3 million user interactions with more than 2,500 brand posts on seven social networks. The result? Brands' Google Plus posts generated nearly as much engagement per follower as their Facebook posts — and almost twice as much engagement per follower as their Twitter posts."

18 Rules of Living By The Dalai Lama

                                                                                

At the turn of this century, the Dalai Lama issued the following eighteen rules for living.

                                    




1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson

3. Follow the three Rs: 1. Respect for self 2. Respect for others 3. Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a 
      second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need 
      for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

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Using Our Own Minds

The Ultimate Authority

Input from experts is valuable but our own sense of the truth is ultimately the most important.

To a certain degree, we rely on other people’s accounts of reality to inform us of the nature of the universe. For example, we can’t all be molecular physicists, but we can benefit from taking their findings to heart. In the same way, we often look to teachers, various leaders, and gurus to tell us about the path to enlightenment and the nature of the realm of spirit. While this input from experts is undeniably valuable, our own sense of the truth is ultimately the most important piece in processing the information we take in from external sources. In the end, we are the authorities in our own lives, and we have the final say on whether something generally held as true is true for us. 

We need only take a brief look at history to remember that the religious, scientific, and political establishments that ruled the day were all wrong about something at some point in time. This is the beauty of learning, experiencing, and evolving. While we sometimes wish we could just let someone else decide for us what is real and true, this is clearly not a viable option. The good news in all this is that we can confidently devote ourselves to making up our own minds about reality, taking everything that is handed to us as truth with a grain of salt. 

This does not mean that we discount the information we receive from outside sources. It simply means that we are vigilant enough to question it before we decide whether or not we agree with it. All the information we receive is useful in the process of helping us make up our own minds. As we allow ourselves to sit with the things we learn, measuring them alongside our own inner sense of the truth and our own experiences, we find that making up our minds is a joyful process of integration that grows us into stronger, smarter, more engaged human beings. 

Pat Savage

My crush of the day a 1969 Dodge Super Bee

This photo shoot was done by my friend Michele Lugadino

http://www.lugadino-photopicture.com/

A Very Bad Idea That Millions of People Believe

For the first time since the field of psychology formally became a science, which was only a century ago, serious attention is being paid to happiness. Previously, the focus was on the causes of unhappiness, and with good reason. Mental disorders inflict enormous misery, and generations of clinicians wanted to find some kind of cure. Psychiatrists and psychologists are still devoted to this aim, but room has been made to ask a fundamental question: Is it possible to find lasting happiness?

The jury is still out, so far as a professional consensus is concerned. One view is that happiness is fairly random and incidental - it comes and goes, without anyone predicting when it will happen. Another view is that happiness needs to be redefined so that people don't chase after a fantasy of constant sunshine and bliss. Our expectations should be reduced, with the aim of a general state of contentment. Finally, there are super-optimists who maintain that the highest level of happiness is possible, but it is attainable only by locating a higher reality and establishing yourself there.

Given these very mixed messages, the vast majority of people ignore psychological theory, using their time and energy to carve out a workable, everyday kind of happiness, while in the back of their minds they fear the catastrophes that may destroy their happiness altogether - poverty, crime, and disease. One reason that the field of "positive psychology" came into being is that this seat-of-the-pants approach to happiness doesn't actually work very well, and it's probably declining as we speak.

This is where a very bad idea enters the picture. It holds that money buys happiness, and the more money you have, the happier you will be. In a sense, capitalism runs on this idea, but I'm not writing to outline the flaws in capitalism. Every economic system generates its own myths and is blind to its own defects if you believe in the system. The real problem with "money buys happiness" is twofold. First, it's not true beyond a very limited point. Having enough money to be comfortable produces more happiness than living with the stress of poverty and want. Beyond this fairly modest state of financial security (not so modest if you were born into a poor country or have an impoverished background in a rich one) money brings more stress than it's worth.

Positive psychologists seem pretty sure about this finding, looking at a broad range of subjects, although of course there are exceptions - rich people who seem exceedingly happy and poor people who seem the same. Even so, if you really care about your happiness more than your bank account, you shouldn't devote your life to the pursuit of wealth, no matter how much our society glorifies being rich and mythologizes the wealthy as if they live in a paradise on earth.

The second reason that "money buys happiness" is such a bad idea is subtler. The pursuit of money prevents you from finding happiness another way. I hold the minority position about happiness, the one that says lasting happiness depends on our state of awareness, and to find the highest state of happiness, you must reach a higher state of consciousness. The same view has been held for centuries by all the world's wisdom traditions, and ironically, now is the best time to test it out. In the past, the average person was helpless in the face of poverty, war, and disease. That's no longer true for millions of people who have enough control over their destiny to pursue happiness rather than simply try to survive.

It would be a shame to waste this golden opportunity by thoughtlessly adhering to such a bad idea as "money buys happiness." From the seed of this idea grows offspring, such as the idea that poverty means that you are an inferior person, a loser, or the idea that winning is everything, since winning implies monetary rewards. Then there's the idea that you can use your money to buy so many glittery toys and distractions that these will constitute happiness, and so on. The truth is that happiness is an inner pursuit that is very different from the pursuit of pleasure or the amassment of a fortune. No one should accept this as a given; it needs to be tested out personally. In the end, the message of the world's wisdom traditions is a call to find out the truth for yourself. It just helps to clear away the underbrush of untruths, and "money buys happiness" is just that.

Deepak Chopra

The Incredible Truth About Time

• The incredible truth about time

Theories of science have ignored time... until now. A new idea reveals how it created the Universe - and you.

Time: it rules our lives, and we all wish we had more of it. Businesses make money out of it, and scientists can measure it with astonishing accuracy. Earlier this year, American researchers unveiled an atomic clock accurate to better than one second since the Big Bang 14 billion years ago.

But what, exactly, is time? Despite its familiarity, its ineffability has defied even the greatest thinkers. Over 1,600 years ago the philosopher Augustine of Hippo admitted defeat with words that still resonate: If no-one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

What exactly is the true nature of time? 

Yet according to theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, the time has come to grapple with this ancient conundrum: Understanding the nature of time is the single most important problem facing science, he says.

As one of the founders of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, which specialises in tackling fundamental questions in physics, Professor Smolin has spent more time pondering deep questions than most. So why does he think the nature of time is so important? Because, says Smolin, it is central to the success of attempts to understand reality itself.

To most people, this may sound a bit overblown. Since reality in all its forms, from the Big Bang to the Sunday roast, depends on time, isnt it obvious that we should take time seriously? And didnt scientists sort out its mysteries centuries ago?

Prepare for a shock. Scientists have indeed tackled the mystery of time and reached an astounding conclusion. They insist that the most successful theories in physics prove that time does not exist.

But now Smolin has news for these scientists. He thinks theyve been led to dismiss the reality of time by a mix of deep-seated beliefs and esoteric mathematics. And in a controversial new book Time Reborn, he sets out the dangers of persisting with this folly, and the promise of accepting times fundamental importance. If hes right, it means far from being irrelevant, time is of crucial importance to explaining how the Universe works and is even responsible for our very existence.

Smolin is under no illusions about what hes taking on. The scientific case for time being an illusion is formidable, he says. The core of the case against time relies on the way we understand what a law of physics is. He isnt saying the laws are wrong, just that scientists dont understand their true origins. According to the standard view, everything that happens in the Universe is determined by laws, he says. Laws are absolute they dont change with time. Its this attribute that makes laws so powerful in predicting the future: plug in the Earths position today into the law of gravity, and itll give a pretty accurate location for its position a million years from now.

The laws also seem to reveal the true nature of time: They suggest the flow of time is just a convenient illusion that can be replaced by computation, says Smolin. In other words, time is just a trick that makes the equations spit out the right answers.

The Time Lord: Prof Lee Smolin is championing the existence of time

Emboldened by the seemingly limitless power of their laws and concept of time, physicists have sought to understand the properties of everything including the Universe as a whole, in all its infinite majesty. But time and again, when theyve attempted this, theyve run into problems.

Over 300 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton tried to apply his law of universal gravity to the whole Universe, only to see it collapse when dealing with the infinite extent of space. A century ago, Albert Einstein applied his far more powerful theory of gravity, General Relativity, to the cosmos, but it broke down at the large scale when explaining the Big Bang.

In the mid-1960s, the American theorist John Wheeler and his collaborator Bryce DeWitt decided to see what insights might emerge from applying the most successful theory in all science quantum theory to the cosmos. Most often applied to the sub-atomic world, quantum theory can in principle at least be applied to everything, even the large-scale workings of the Universe.

Wheeler and DeWitt succeed in producing a nightmarishly complex equation that, according to quantum theory, captures the true nature of the Universe. But the equation spawned a shocking insight. Of all the quantities it contained, one that everyone expected it to include had simply vanished: t for time. According to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, the quantum state of the Universe is just frozen, says Smolin. The quantum Universe is a Universe without change. It just simply is.

The contrast with apparent reality could hardly be more stark. Astronomers insist the Universe began in a Big Bang and is still expanding. Stars are constantly being born and dying along with ourselves. Clearly, something is wrong.

Many theorists have tried to find ways of getting what we perceive to be time to emerge from the timeless Universe described by the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Ive pondered these approaches, says Smolin, and I remain convinced none of them work. He believes only a fundamental re-think about time can solve the crisis.

Not everyone agrees, however. Some insist that the Wheeler-DeWitt equation reveals the truth about time no matter how unpalatable we find it. Chief among them is the British theoretical physicist Dr Julian Barbour, Visiting Professor at Oxford University. He has spent decades wrestling with the meaning of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, and is renowned for his 1999 magnum opus The End Of Time.

Unlike Smolin, Barbour insists the Wheeler-DeWitt equations implication for time cannot be dismissed. He argues that the Universe is really a vast, static array of nows, like frames on some cosmic movie-reel. At any given moment, or now, time does not need to be factored in to explanations of how the Universe works. The sense of time passing comes from our minds processing each of these frames or time capsules, as Barbour calls them. Time itself, however, doesnt exist.

Smolin greatly admires Barbours efforts: Its the best thought-through approach to making sense of quantum cosmology, he says. He has even incorporated some of Barbours latest ideas into his own. But he believes it suffers from the same flaws as all timeless theories of the Universe: it struggles to make testable predictions, and it cant explain where the timeless laws of physics come from in the first place.

Smolin thinks he can do all this, and more. And to do it, he calls on the properties of the most extraordinary objects in the Universe today: black holes.

Formed from the collapse of giant stars, black holes are notorious for having gravitational fields so strong not even light can escape them. Exactly what happens inside them isnt known for sure, but there are hints from quantum theory that the centre of black holes may be the birth-places of whole new universes, each with different laws of physics.

Smolin points out that if this is correct, then a kind of cosmic version of Darwinian natural selection could apply, in which the most common universes will be those most suitable for producing black holes. And this, he says, can be put to the test in our Universe. After countless aeons of cosmic evolution, our Universe should by now be ruled by laws of physics well-suited to producing black holes. According to Smolin, astrophysicists can check to see if this is actually true and to date the evidence suggests it is.

The most striking evidence, though, may be our own existence. Black holes are formed from the death of huge stars in supernova explosions. Intriguingly, these are the very same stars that produce the carbon, oxygen and other elements required for life. If there were no giant stars, there would be no universe-spawning black holes and no evolving laws of physics and no us, either.

Smolin is thus suggesting that our very existence may be evidence for cosmic evolution. And since evolution can only happen over time, that in turn suggests time is real. Its an astonishing line of argument for the reality of time and one that doesnt convince everyone. I find these ideas very speculative to say the least, says theorist Prof Claus Kiefer of the University of Cologne in Germany. He doubts even the starting point for Smolins argument for the reality of time: There is no evidence whatsoever that new universes are born inside black holes.

What everyone agrees on, however, is that time certainly seems real. And there can be no disputing the boldness of Smolins arguments.

If hes right, our Universe is just the latest in an endless series. Over time, over successive universes, the laws of physics have been evolving to the point where the conditions are just right to form not just black holes the birthplaces of new universes but also the building blocks of life, including us. In other words, time explains the apparent fluke that our Universe has just the right combination of conditions to allow our existence.

So is Smolin right about all this or is time really an illusion, as most theorists insist? Only time will tell.

Sources and more information:

• What Is the True Nature of Time?

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• Time Reborn by Lee Smolin - Why Time Actually Exists

What is time? Philosophically and scientifically, that's a hard question to answer. Can anyone even tell us how many books have been written about time? Here are some of my questions: Is there one eternal now that exists everywhere, throughout all of reality, in this universe, and all the other universes of the multiverse? Is time just the 4th...