Folks,


An edited repost from FB, commenting on the reality that we are but bits of old stars born of bits of atoms, space, and time. The fellow who prompted my extemporaneous explateration noted that when we handed a coin over a store counter for change or a tip, we were exchanging star stuff.


S


"There is the fact that we are the dust of a Supernova, holding the dust of a supernova in a silly coin while standing on the dust of a supernova.

Like the old lady said to the physicist, "Hey, buddy, it's turtles all the way up and down."

We are, however, privileged to live in a day hoped for by Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato and their ilk at the dawn of "modern" thinking. Today, some folks are good enough at math and have the scientific instruments to peer across time and space toward the very edge of our Universe. From this perspective, we might soon even glimpse other Universes. This is a literal, scientific possibility. (String Theory, the LHC Experiment)

Wow! Think about this for a moment. It took us Humans about 200,000 years from our specie's birth to create a clan of families. It then only took another few thousand years to make a village. Then, just a while later we made the first little cities, about 10,000 years ago. We swiftly made city states, and thence on to nations. Today, we are reckoning with forging one Human world, lest we perish… yeah, along this path we also created war and a weapon that can literally destroy a planet.

The stakes are high, even as we swiftly, over the course of less than half a millennia of refining physics and engineering, stand in the face of the edge of the Universe… or, perhaps our doom, but hopefully our redemption.

For all I know, we live on a world that is a petri dish, an experiment left behind by another species, or maybe we're just an example of what happens when you contaminate a pristine, barren planet in the right place around its home star with certain chemicals. Whatever. Here we are and this is a beautiful moment to learn all that we can about Everything, and maybe make a difference. What else is there to do?"

What You Get When Protons Collide

Welcome to the Future. We're Glad You Made It!

Folks,

I live in a small city that is the home of a leading school for the deaf. The Clarke School has had a long standing relationship with our local and the region's hospitals and medical schools. As a result, it is not uncommon to run into folks with aural prosthetics, cochlear implants, attached to their skulls just behind the ear. These ordinary humans are cyborgs of the first design. Yes, we can give hearing to the deaf.

But, what about sight to the blind? I worked for a while with a computer science lab that worked on machine vision. Back then, about a decade ago, the smart folks in the lab thought that we'd have only a quarter century of work before they could place a chip into a Human eye and wire it to the nerves to the brain. Maybe their work would deliver sixteen pixels… enough to help a blind person not bump into a door jam or stumble on a curb.

In short order, much more was accomplished, and more imagined. So, why stop at the limits of "normal" Human vision? How about seeing in other spectra, IR and UV, even X-Ray? There's no tech that we haven't already invented to do that; it just has to be miniaturized and implantable. Why restrict these abilities to the disabled? I might like to spend my vacation money on the opportunity to see things not only with Human eyes, but those of a Honey Bee, and to hear things as a bat does.

S

Becoming Cyborgs…

We get to live here!

Folks,

I've taken a few photos of lunar eclipses, but never a multiple exposure as ravishing as this one created by Itahisa N. González and the Heavens over the Canary Islands.

S

Celestial Mechanical Beauty…

Folks,

There is no shortage of work for troublesome dopes. I must redo my resume.

S

Do We Need These Idiots Helping Us?

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…