I’m not here. I’m an event. I’m an improbable coalescence of stardust enjoying one fleeting, glorious dance through the cosmos before … poof.”
— Adrian Bliss
Tag: Committee For A Bigger Universe
Transcendent Science and Knowery.
“2001” in 2024
LET’S TAKE IT FROM THE top, shall we?
– Earth-orbiting weapons: check.
– Commercial spaceflight: check.
– “Shirtsleeve” space environments: check.
– Seatback videoscreens: check. (Legal pad-sized portable videoscreens: check.)
– Spaceflight stewardesses: not to my knowledge.
– Zero-G pens: check.
– Zero-G toilets: check.
– Space station: check. (Commercial space station, with hotel: in development.)
– Voiceprint identification: check.
– Inexpensive picturephones: check.
– Pasty space food: check. (Actually, we’re now well beyond the “pasty” stage, so double-check.)
– Lunar base: in development.
– Fashionable spacesuits: check.
– Crewed deep-space mission: in development.
– Voice-interactive, slightly sinister AI: check.
– Tint-adjustable glass: check.
– Solar-powered alien transmitter buried millions of years ago beneath the Moon’s most conspicuous crater: Dear God, I hope so.
5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.
0. READ CAREFULLY — THERE WILL BE a test later on.
1. In the book of Exodus, Moses tells the Children of Israel that G?d wants to enter into a contract with them. With one voice, and without knowing the details, the people reply, “Na’aseh v’nishma” — literally, “We will do, and we will hear/understand!”
2. Many people may argue that the formulation is backwards. How can you do something unless you first hear and/or understand it? But the Torah is imparting a great truth: that one can understand certain things only by doing them. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.”
Posse Commentatus (An Alpha-Nerd Manifesto)
(Originally posted 2007.06.28)
IN THE BEGINNING was the Text. But not for long.
The Text – definer and exemplar, authority and comfort, platform and trampoline – was no ordinary collection of words. It spoke of history and possibility, treated miracles as though they were commonplace and elevated the commonplace above the miraculous. Its basic gist was that humanity matters, even if humanity couldn’t always understand why.
Yet while the Text was finite (after all, its Author had to stop writing somewhere) it did contain the seeds of an infinite perpetuation, though not in the most obvious of ways.
Continue reading “Posse Commentatus (An Alpha-Nerd Manifesto)”
Regarding ChatGPT (or, Cassandra’s Got Nothing On Me)
BE CAREFUL PLAYING WITH THE shiny new toy — the shiny new toy may decide to play with you.
… And So Say All of Us
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
— Thos. Jefferson
Stellar Blues
do the stars know the names
by which we call them?
we,
the hubristic and temporary,
label the unthinkably ancient
with quick mouth sounds
and fading pen-scratches.
will they mourn
when we are gone?
would they say:
“nice try, two-legs;
you had one chance
at planetary survival
and missed it
by not paying attention.”
would but those who did pay
had more power than
only the will
to shout
stop
and make it stick.
Zero POV
Clearly the best time to be alive is when you start out wondering and end up knowing. There is only one generation in the whole history of mankind in that position. Us.”
— Carl Sagan, June 1974
From Stars to You
By telling tales about stardust, I hope we can remind ourselves that we live in an interconnected and beautiful world, full of rare and precious elements. It is our duty to treat it, and each other, with care and respect.”
— Astrophysicist Sanjana Curtis
Private Fame
TO AN AMATEUR SKYWATCHER (in the original sense of that first word), the beginning of the month is quite special; it’s when the new issue of Astronomy arrives. Among that magazine’s many excellent features and fixtures is “Ask Astro,” where experts answer readers’ questions. Here is something from the May 2023 “Ask Astro” that — well, just look:
“Be It a Rock or a Pebble…”
Be not ashamed to learn truth from any source.”
— Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol (1021-1058)
Educational Eloquence
IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein