Here's Where We Been…

Well,

If any of you fellahs never been down this highway, you never yet lived…

S

Black Throated Wind…

Folks,

A speculation by a clever guy, delivered back in 1961. Now, this Sagan fellow figured out a lot of stuff that has turned out to be true and important, both here and above. More on that later, perhaps. But, back in the '60's, he was wondering if the clouds of ammonia and hydrogen in the atmosphere of Jupiter might seed life of a kind we do not yet know. Perhaps, as one of the ancient Greeks, Aristophanes, imagined, there was a Cloud Cuckoo Land, where creatures did float and play with beings below their loft closer to the stars.

Let's go find out.

S

Life in Clouds?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,895649,00.html

Folks,

Back in 1963 a young fellah gave what is likely the finest political speech ever delivered in modern history. It is certainly the best ever recorded in audio and television. Naw… it's just the best. If you were young and weird like me back in '63, you saw him throw down the fire on a sunny day in August, and provoke a crowd of tens of thousands to peacefulness and reasonableness… you saw him stare down a man with atom bombs, sheriff's and their thugs with guns and dogs, and nothing but the facts of the matter to help The People win the day.

Well, almost. The work continues. You should listen to the attached clip of the entire oratorical monument, but there's one little bit that usually goes unquoted. He says, three times I think, "Now is the time!". Whatever the cause for peace and justice at the moment, now is the time. Now is the time. It's a notion never improved and never out of date.

Oh, and the guy was handy with a pool cue and knew a little something about how to gamble in the big time.

S

I Have a Dream…

History is Fun!

Folks,

Here's one excerpt from a book that seems interesting. The topic of the excerpt is the foundations of Hinduism. The book is about the history of religion, in general. But, in this piece, Prithvira Ji lays out a plausible template for the Human social mechanisms for forging religions from our most ancient roots, across the globe.

S

How Did Our Religions Form?

Nice View from a Fascinating Neighborhood…

Folks,

Right at this moment, there are six folks making a living by working in outer space. Think about that. Humans can do this stuff. We can also take some meaningful pictures to share with folks still having their feet on the ground. A fellow named Doug Wheelock kept a little scrap book, during his time two-hundred and sixty miles above the Home World. Here are just two shots.

S

Sunset seen from orbit. Look at the gentle curve of the Earth's horizon. We know how big our world seems to us here, and even from this vantage it looms large. Then look at the thin layer of atmosphere. It is proportionally thinner than the skin of an apple stretched across that fruit… and that is all we got.

Here's a lady named Tracy. She taking a break from work, looking out the window of her office.

Uncle Al's Mistake…

Folks,

Here's an article by a fairly bright guy, a physicist named Brian Green. It's a little technical, but written for the popular audience. Anyhow, it made me remember back to when I was eleven years old. I'd just discovered the Beatles, girls, and a couple of other fascinations that caused me to cause some trouble in the coming years.

But one day, at my Uncle's house, I stumbled upon a biography of Albert Einstein. Nobody else was up in the house, so I started reading. I became wrapt. I devoured that book in one morning. Tho having no sense with math, the way the old man, dead in the year that I was born, described the flexible mesh of Space-Time was simply common sense to me. The fact that he got to his vision by pursuing a question that he'd had since he was six years old… that made sense, as well. I had been furrowing my young brow with such questions for some years, as well.

S

Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.

Folks,


A long time ago, in 1861, a fellow named Fitzhugh Ludlow wrote these words about something that I experience today, and have since I was young; synesthesia. Here he is referring to his experience of some years earlier, after eating a chunk of hasheesh. But, as I have learned, you don't need to get chemically altered to experience this sort of stuff. Truly, the creek near your house can speak to you. Music can be seen. Colors tasted. Human feelings can be seen.

The variety of Human mind and perception is to marvel at. We are small creatures living on a dust mote in the Cosmos, but Mind is vast. This old guy's description of his own experience is just splendid in its Victorian manner.

Anyhow, if you're curious, seek out more of this guy. He was Mark Twain's confidant, and a noted American literary figure for a brief time. He did leave behind a treasure of information from the vanguard of ideas.

S

"The soul is sometimes plainly perceived to be but one in its own sensorium, while the body is understood to be all that so variously modifies impressions as to make them in the one instance smell, in another taste, another sight, and thus on, ad finem. Thus the hasheesh-eater knows what it is to be burned by salt fire, to smell colors, to see sounds, and, much more frequently, to see feelings."