Archive

Archive for August, 2008

If our lives are to have any meaning

August 4, 2008 10 comments

I’ve posted various mixes of Sagan’s meditation “You Are Here” from his book Pale Blue Dot.  Each one adds something to the unique perspective of our world against the cosmic vastness.  This moving and beautiful remix uses scenes from movies – the storytellers of our culture – as illustrations for Sagan’s words, and a haunting instrumental from Mogwai as its emotional frame. 

Hat tip to Iconoclasts Anonymous, who asks “Who inspires you?”

Religions insist that only by believing in a transcendent being can our lives have any meaning, any purpose.  But it is in the nature of our species to see sentience everywhere; spirits in the clouds, purpose in random events, the face of Mary in a cheese sandwich. For those not able to believe – if the universe suggests to us the existence of no such benevolent overseer – then any meaning derived from that belief is also a phantom.  It is not clear to me how any comfort can be derived from a known illusion, a quirk of our neurological evolution. 

Nor why it is necessary.  The reality in which we find ourselves is a spatial and temporal enormity, in which we are imperceptible points.  Our lifespans are nine places to the right of the decimal point against the age of the universe so far.  The universe will not give meaning to us; rather we must, in whatever small way we we can, give meaning to the universe.  Just this; despite our temporality, we did not give in to despair or nihilism.  We found our own joy, and made room for the joy of others while we were alive.  For such future generations as there might be, we left behind the best world we could – that is our responsibility and our meaning, if we have the courage to face it.

One might ask; at the other end of many more billions of years, when the cosmos is growing cold, what would it matter?  Who would know?  As if we somehow deserved eternity by virtue of having thought up the word.

We will know.  And if no one else knows, that will have to be enough.

Categories: observations

Vote McCain

August 4, 2008 3 comments

Blog Around The Clock has a whole bunch of reasons why you should vote for McCain.  No need to thank me for finding this stuff, it’s all part of the service.

Categories: Politics

Large Hadron Collider Rap

August 3, 2008 Comments off

I don’t know if I’m rooting for them to find the Higgs… or not!  Either would be an exciting outcome.  Blog Around The Clock lays down the tracks

Categories: Science & Technology

Drilling

August 3, 2008 4 comments

The gold color of the drill bit is its titanium nitride coating.  The curly plastic is some translucent PVC, I think.  And the gray ‘floor’ is the cast-iron platform of my drill press.  But the result was something I just had to share with you…

(Picture field of view 2.25 inches wide)

Categories: observations

In the lives of two children

August 3, 2008 1 comment

There’s lots of good stuff in this month’s Carnival Of The Elitist Bastards, handled with self-congratulatory hilarity this month by PZ Myers.  Here’s the send-off he gave to GrrlScientist in her touching story, Living The Thinking Life (Evolution of an atheist).

Myers: “GrrlScientist had a fine start in life, shouting “Goddamn you to hell!” at the age of four. I have to say that this piece approaches perfect elitist bastardry, but what can I say? She likes birds. Birds just aren’t badass enough.”

Hardly gives any inkling of the pathos and depth in her story.  Let’s look at what happened when the little girl made that humorous announcement:

GrrlScientist: “Except for one minor detail: god never fried my errant sibling just as god never fried me all those times I had been damned to hell. But the fallout generated by uttering this one oft-heard phrase was absolutely spectacular. I might have been a sweet little three- or four-year-old (although the parents would tell you otherwise), but my parents nearly killed me, and I mean they really nearly killed me. So I learned a very valuable lesson regarding the power of words…”

Go check out the rest of it, including the role played by her relationships to animals.  And while we’re on children and their interactions with animals and with the adult world, here’s something I didn’t know about zoologist Alan Rabinowitz: as a child he stuttered so badly he could not talk at all to people.  But he could talk to animals.  Go check out where he tells Stephen Colbert about meeting with world dictators to save tigers and leopards, and remember him next time you see a child who struggles with some serious handicap.

We don’t know, I mean we really don’t know what happens in reel 2 of the movie that is our child’s life. Or even necessarily what’s happening in reel 1.

Categories: observations

A chronic pain day

August 2, 2008 14 comments

About 1:30 last night my body decided to start running a series of load-capacity tests on every nociceptor in the nervous system.  Or something.  But I have been damned uncomfortable today and painkillers are not helping.

This started being a problem – sometimes quite severe like today – years ago after my first bout of kidney stones and one of my early surgeries.  It’s as if the pain circuits got stuck.  As I have passed more stones and had more surgeries, it has gotten worse.  Accident 4 years ago did not help.

An MD muscle specialist finally figured it out: he said I have “chronic migratory fasciitis”.  (I resisted the urge to ask him if that was like migratory coconuts.)  But as he explained the malady he kept mentioning fibromyalgia.  I asked him; “Is this fibromyalgia?”  He said; “Well, it’s the same thing as fibromyalgia.”  Thanks for clearing that up, doc.

It reminds me of my old Greek professor – he wasn’t from Greece, he just taught Greek.  He said we pay doctors to translate our ailments into Greek.  You go to the doctor and say; “Doctor, my eye is swollen.”  He says; “Aha!  You’ve got ophthalmitis!  That will be twenty-five dollars, please.” I guess I should update that anecdote to reflect the current cost of medical care.

I don’t know where I’m going with this post but anyway that’s where I am.

Categories: Personal