TO THE SMALL CATALOGUE OF meaningful three-word human phrases (“I love you,” “let me help,” “take your time,” “hold my beer”) should be added one pertaining to perhaps that oldest of motivations: “Let’s go see!” Mind you, this drive isn’t…
Tag: Committee For A Bigger Universe
Transcendent Science and Knowery.
The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.”
— Andre Malraux
“For My Next Trick, I Will Unite the Universe…”
A FUN WAY TO ENTERTAIN and enlighten early adolescents is via the following exercise: “What’s the first dimension?” you’d ask. They’d answer, “Length.” “The second?” “Width.” “Third?” “Height.” “Fourth?” “Time!” “That’s right. Now, for my next trick, I will unite…
On “Secret Fame”
IN ANY HUMAN AFFINITY GROUP, of whatever size, there are always one or two people whom “everybody knows” — be it for their work, skills or sheer ubiquity. This is the concept of Secret Fame: celebrities of the specialty worlds…
How I Missed the Moonwalk
THE LAST THING I REMEMBER is Neil Armstrong opening the LEM’s front hatch to begin his televised and epic descent. When I was seven years old, and crazy for space, I had memorized the names of all the astronauts from…
Backyard astronomers are a special breed. They savor their moments under the stars. They have an infatuation — a love affair — with the cosmos that grows and nurtures itself just as meaningful human relationships do. Of course, it is a less definable one-way relationship, but I have come to regard that feeling as the closest I can ever come to being at one with nature. After a night under the stars, I have a sense of mellowness, an amalgam of humility, wonder and discovery. The universe is beautiful, in both the visual and spiritual sense.”
–Terence Dickinson, Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe
“Free Moon Trips!”
THERE MAY BE NO QUICKER way to evoke reverent awe than by looking through a telescope at the night’s rich bounty. I was 13 when I first trained a small refractor, a gift from my parents, on the planet Saturn.…
Larry Niven Calls This “The Funniest Prayer in Literature”
TUCKED INTO MY INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH siddur (prayerbook) is the following supplication. It’s there to keep me riding the trail of Faith without falling into the trap of thinking I know everything — or, really, anything — about that-which-some-people-call-God. Ladies, gentlemen, friends,…
Why I Love: Robert Anton Wilson
IT’S THE WAY HE BLOWS my mind. It’s the way he mixes conviction with doubt. It’s his searingly funny prose. It’s his search for Ultimate Relativity. It’s that he taught me some important Latin phrases, like “Cui bono?” and “Non…
We’re trapped in linguistic constructs… all that is, is metaphor.”
—Robert Anton Wilson
Why I Love: Ancient History
IT’S FALLING ASLEEP HOLDING A copy of Herodotus’ The Histories or Gaster’s The Oldest Stories in the World. It’s the endless theorizing about daily life in a different context. It’s the observation that no matter what the era, people will…
First Graf(s): The New Hacker’s Dictionary
THE DEFINITION OF “HACKER” HEREIN is “a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.” In 2019, we have all…