Climb out of the cellar of literalism, up the steps of metaphor and into the fresh air of reason and revelation.
DB - The Vagabond
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Join me for a time.
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According to NASA the space shuttle Discovery reentered the Earth's atmosphere going 25 times the speed of sound. I find it very difficult to wrap my 20th Century mind around such a fact. I can't imagine anything going that fast. If something passed me at that speed would I even see it?
I remember reading somewhere that when the automobiles were first being produced some pseudo scientist proclaimed that the human body could never travel faster than 8 miles an hour and survive. (Someone ought to collect and publish all the remarks made through the years about things that could never happen.)
No doubt someday, possibly very soon, scientists will discover how to move faster than the speed of light. ("Nah. It'll never happen. The human body would disintegrate.") And when that becomes a mode of travel our whole concepts of time and space will go through a profound and amazing reinterpretation.
The mentality to accommodate such a reinterpretation is already in place. Almost all, and perhaps all, of the phenomena of life begin somewhere in the human imagination I think it was Einstein who said that reason will take you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere.
What would conquering the speed of light do for us? Imagine being in two different places at the same time. I wrote a story about that. Imagine two events, one past, one future happening in the same place at once. Imagine being in one place and in a totally different place at the same moment.
Never mind that. That's too literal. Imagine that time and space as we know it cease to exist at all. (Vagabond, you've lost your mind.) Some philosophers have averred that the whole concepts of time and space were products of the human imagination in the first place.
Well what if they are? What if the marriage of time and space is just a trope, an allegory, a device to explain to ourselves the repetitions and changes that we think we see? Things are seldom what they seem. Our lives are filled with myths and mirages. It is comfortable in the cellar of literalism, Climbing up through the steps of metaphor takes an effort. But until we recognize that one thing is meant to symbolize another and that it's the other the needs to be revealed we'll be stuck at the bottom and never climb the stairs.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
_________________
May angels play in your bird bath.
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Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Heavy Hitting 8/26/09
Never bear more than one trouble at a time.
Edward Everett Hale
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Hurry and get your note book ready because September is coming and that means all....
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LOOKING AT THE WORLD THROUGH MUD COLORED GLASSES
I sometimes mention my poor eyesight. Do I have trouble seeing distance or up close? Both. I have bifocals but there is virtually no difference between how I see whether they are on my nose or not. So why do I bother to wear them? Habit.
I think one of the worst things that can happen to any creature is to be stuck; in a trap, in an airplane, in a hateful job, in a destructive relationship. I believe in freedom, but freedom has it's edges. I don't want to be free to hate anyone, or to destroy anything good. For the past week I was stuck in a cave of forced inactivity simply because I was in trouble and didn't know what to do about it. Wrong steps could have taken me deeper into the cave. I was desperate and confused. I wouldn't want to wish that on my worst enemy. I don't know who my worst enemy is, but what I wish on him or her is the severe, painful punishment of enlightenment and freedom from the trap of wrong doing. Seriously. Read this:
"My people are brave and respected, even in the eyes of our enemy, because we as elders have taught them to be proud and to respect everyone and everything around them." Waanatan, 1865, Chief of the Dakota Nation.
Some people I know were scornful and insulting about the distress I was in the past week. It's hard to be respectful of those who scorn and belittle your pain, especially when you remember how you were there for them when their feet were in the stocks. If I had the money I would invite the lawyer who's suing me to lunch and during it I would give him, as respectfully and as gentlemanly as possible, an ethical lesson. And, who knows, if he enjoyed the lunch he might take the lesson to heart. And maybe he could give me a lesson in law.
I think one of the biggest mistakes this country made was to decide to set up NASA in Florida where the weather is volatile. I pity the astronauts who struggle into those bulbous space suits looking like orange Pillsbury dough boys and squirming into the small spacecraft to a cramped, uncomfortable position and then to lie there for three to four hours only to be told to come out again because there's a rain storm somewhere near and they won't be flying. But to dismantle the whole operation and move it to southern California would cost more money than the country has (if it still has any). So we're stuck with having our universe shattering, history making. world discovering space exploration dependant upon the local weather.
I pity the poor airline passengers who are forced to sit on the tarmac for 8 to 10 hours not knowing why or how long they're there. That's an inhuman way to treat people and yet it keeps happening. The muddy minded people who are responsible for doing that to passengers, for whatever legal, technical or administrative reasons they may have, should be re-educated or replaced. There must be provisions at every major airport for getting passengers off an aircraft after an hour of waiting if it isn't about to take off. I don't care how costly and inconvenient it is, these are people I'm talking about, not sacks of mail, fellow human beings. There is no excuse for treating people that way. Even the astronauts are let off the shuttle if it isn't going to fly.
To be stuck in some awful situation without being able to see your way out of it is a nightmare. You might as well be buried alive. I know what I'm saying.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
___________________________
Throw some happiness around.
***************************************
PS: Miss Alaina and pacifica62 please see the comment section of my previous entry. Thank you.
Edward Everett Hale
*********************************
Hurry and get your note book ready because September is coming and that means all....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
LOOKING AT THE WORLD THROUGH MUD COLORED GLASSES
I sometimes mention my poor eyesight. Do I have trouble seeing distance or up close? Both. I have bifocals but there is virtually no difference between how I see whether they are on my nose or not. So why do I bother to wear them? Habit.
I think one of the worst things that can happen to any creature is to be stuck; in a trap, in an airplane, in a hateful job, in a destructive relationship. I believe in freedom, but freedom has it's edges. I don't want to be free to hate anyone, or to destroy anything good. For the past week I was stuck in a cave of forced inactivity simply because I was in trouble and didn't know what to do about it. Wrong steps could have taken me deeper into the cave. I was desperate and confused. I wouldn't want to wish that on my worst enemy. I don't know who my worst enemy is, but what I wish on him or her is the severe, painful punishment of enlightenment and freedom from the trap of wrong doing. Seriously. Read this:
"My people are brave and respected, even in the eyes of our enemy, because we as elders have taught them to be proud and to respect everyone and everything around them." Waanatan, 1865, Chief of the Dakota Nation.
Some people I know were scornful and insulting about the distress I was in the past week. It's hard to be respectful of those who scorn and belittle your pain, especially when you remember how you were there for them when their feet were in the stocks. If I had the money I would invite the lawyer who's suing me to lunch and during it I would give him, as respectfully and as gentlemanly as possible, an ethical lesson. And, who knows, if he enjoyed the lunch he might take the lesson to heart. And maybe he could give me a lesson in law.
I think one of the biggest mistakes this country made was to decide to set up NASA in Florida where the weather is volatile. I pity the astronauts who struggle into those bulbous space suits looking like orange Pillsbury dough boys and squirming into the small spacecraft to a cramped, uncomfortable position and then to lie there for three to four hours only to be told to come out again because there's a rain storm somewhere near and they won't be flying. But to dismantle the whole operation and move it to southern California would cost more money than the country has (if it still has any). So we're stuck with having our universe shattering, history making. world discovering space exploration dependant upon the local weather.
I pity the poor airline passengers who are forced to sit on the tarmac for 8 to 10 hours not knowing why or how long they're there. That's an inhuman way to treat people and yet it keeps happening. The muddy minded people who are responsible for doing that to passengers, for whatever legal, technical or administrative reasons they may have, should be re-educated or replaced. There must be provisions at every major airport for getting passengers off an aircraft after an hour of waiting if it isn't about to take off. I don't care how costly and inconvenient it is, these are people I'm talking about, not sacks of mail, fellow human beings. There is no excuse for treating people that way. Even the astronauts are let off the shuttle if it isn't going to fly.
To be stuck in some awful situation without being able to see your way out of it is a nightmare. You might as well be buried alive. I know what I'm saying.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
___________________________
Throw some happiness around.
***************************************
PS: Miss Alaina and pacifica62 please see the comment section of my previous entry. Thank you.
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