“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”

[underpants]

[saltpoint]

1. I miss the man.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Maybe. :^)

[Fovea]

3. Aboard the Hwang Ho.

with his faithful android.
Wherever you go, folks have heard of the Space Wanderer.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Or perhaps not. Light has its own framework of reference, which, while Light ,

itself, interacts with our universe of space-time, is wholly independent of it.

"In its own frame of reference, light (any photon) has a zero lifetime, i.e. it is emitted and absorbed in the same instant, measured traveling along with it. It only appears to have a nonzero lifetime (being created in one instant, then traveling through space at the speed of light, and then being absorbed in a subsequent instant) in our reference frame(s).

Photons are truly magic. As the only truly massless elementary particle yet independently detected, it remains the only particle known to us experimentally which has a zero lifetime in its own reference frame. Gluons are thought to travel at the speed of light but nobody has yet detected a free gluon experimentally...."



M Muskin
Guardian Talk

The thing is, though, that that paradox merely serves to underline that we know NOTHING about the proper framework of reference of Light, and consequently anything else that could exist outside of our universe of space-time. Indeed, we are incapable of understanding paradoxes, since they are, by definition, repugnant to our reason. Even when we say that photons are emitted and absorbed at the same instant, have a zero lifetime, we are using the language of space-time. An 'instant' outside of the frame of space-time is simply a factitious construct, necessarily borrowed from it, and necessarily resorted to, since we can no more understand a scientific paradox, than we can a religious one - which latter, Christians and doubtless other mainstream religions, call 'mysteries'.

Both Science and Church, however, have been given a limited capacity to manage such mysteries to our greater elightenment and general benefit. Not, of course, that it means that they always have been or always are used to such beneficial effect by either party, given our defectible human condition.

[sam sarrha]

5. what we see are the photons bouncing off electron clouds defining empty space, and what we feel is

the electromagnetic repulsion of like charged electron clouds defining empty space..

the only thing that makes sense is the Buddhist concept of Emptiness from the Prajnaparamita, or the Heart Sutra..

...the five aggregates are empty of inherent nature. Form is empty, emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form, form is also not other than emptiness. likewise, sensation, discrimination, conditioning and awareness are empty. in this way Sariputra, all things are emptiness; they are without defiling characteristics; they are not born, they do not cease; they are not defiled, they are not un-defiled, they have no increase, they have no decrease
therefore Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no discrimination, no conditioning, and no awareness. there is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. there is no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no texture, no phenomenon. there is no eye element and so on up to no mind element and also up to no element of mental awareness. there is no ignorance and no elimination of ignorance and on up to no aging and death and no elimination of aging and death. likewise there is no suffering, origin, cessation or path; there is no wisdom. no attainment and even no non attainmnt....

in other words.. emptiness is when subject and object become the same.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

6. So, we all just 'make shit up' to cope with emptiness,...I guess.

If free from form and sensation and sound and awareness et al., what's the use in being here at this moment?

[Rex]

7. Maybe there is no use.

We just create one out of need.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

9. If there is need, there is use/utility.

Doncha' think?

[sam sarrha]

13. i dont think so, it is now obvious how things work, thru meditation our mind is developed and we

acquire what is called 'Skillful Means'.. it is a curious process, something happens when you tune your brain waves to Alpha and spend some time there on a regular basis.. you learn things without knowing it.

[Rex]

18. Alpha waves are fun but

it is obvious how things work when we understand nothing. I'll stick with the Omega wave, more fun.

[sam sarrha]

12. well, that is the goal.. train the mind to be here now. it's bliss, but th conventional mind mess's

it all up.. flipping around in the past and the future.. it is wild horse, useless till you train it and ride it to nirvana. which is already right here, the term Buddha simply means one who is "Awake"

we are all Buddha's. everybody has that gift, but nearly all of us here have just not learned to unwrap it properly

[dave29]

8. GBYMV

n/t

[stlsaxman]

10. truer words were never spoke as his epitaph-

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. I found that persuasive as an agnostic.

[sam sarrha]

14. he was just synesthetic..

[Cha]

15. I remember something I

read that Kurt said that stayed with me..

"Damnit, you have to be kind"

I can't find what it was in reference to but I always think of it.

[TalkingDog]

17. I read an interview once where he was asked if his books

had an underlying theme. He replied: Be nice to each other.

I believe the quote in question: "Goddammit, you have got to be kind!" is from God Bless you Mr. Rosewater



My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

[Cha]

23. Oh thanks! I definetly

remember the "damnit" part..so what I read was probably 2nd hand. :)

I like it cause it's so true. Something the buSHITS will never learn..thus they will always be FAILURES.

[Octafish]

16. Nobody like him.

Nobody like you, either, underpants.

Nor you, reader.

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !*!@

By Joel Bleifuss
In These Times
1.27.03



Kurt Vonnegut | vonnegut.com

In November, Kurt Vonnegut turned 80. He published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952 at the age of 29. Since then he has written 13 others, including Slaughterhouse Five, which stands as one of the pre-eminent anti-war novels of the 20th century.

As war against Iraq looms, I asked Vonnegut, a reader and supporter of this magazine, to weigh in. Vonnegut is an American socialist in the tradition of Eugene Victor Debs, a fellow Hoosier whom he likes to quote: “As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

—Joel Bleifuss

You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?

One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. … An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself—as does George W. Bush, himself a kid—an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on.
What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.

Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?

That they are nonsense.

SNIP...

That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?

“C students from Yale.” It would stand your hair on end.

CONTINUED...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C

God, I miss Mr. Vonnegut.

He gave a damn about everybody.

[Parche]

19. So Where Is Uranus?

[Gabi Hayes]

20. which universe?

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=205

[Rex]

21. This one.

The others meant nothing to me, I swear! Hardly compare to this universe! :D

[Gabi Hayes]

22. RIGHT! our universe is the biggest, bestest of ALL the universes.

And I have one question for anybody who says different:

Why do you HATE our universe?

probably a terra-ist, don't you think?

[Rex]

24. Hahahaha!

Such a GOOD question! Why do they HATE our universe?

[Gabi Hayes]

25. easy....science equals terror:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883378/posts