Divine Masturbation

Long, long ago at the dawn of time
even before the primordial slime
when stretching ahead were all the millennia
in which quite a lot, if not more, even many a
tragic mistake or foul evil plot
lay in the future but not at year dot.

Right at the top of history’s first page
when many an era and aeon and age
loomed far ahead to the greatest extent
was writ a uniquely dramatic event
that some call the Bang that was huge if not big
(please pass me my drink and light me a cig).

It wasn’t just huge, the bang was gigantic
God had felt mellow and flirty, romantic
sultry and horny and steamy and loose
in the mood to create not just reproduce
it’s really not strange, unusual or odd
to find thoughts of love in the mind of a god.

Lumpy or Smooth?

What's the nature of Reality: lumpy or smooth?

Concerning the answer to that question, some cosmologists have big toes; some have fat guts.

String theorists get all tied up in knots about it.
M-theorists haven’t got the branes to decide.
Relativists absolutely understand the gravity of the situation.

Light is discreet — she is made of particles, photons. No, Light is continuous — she comes in waves.

Reality is discreet: she keeps her secrets safe.
No, Reality is continuous: she has no gaps or overlaps.

Reality is smoompy, no, smumpy, no, looth.

1927 Solvay International Conference: physicists meet to discuss quantum theory. (back row L to R) A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, E. Herzen, Th. de Donder, E. Schrödinger, J.E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin; P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr; (Front row) I. Langmuir, M. Planck, M. Skłodowska-Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, Ch.-E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson. The only woman is Marie Curie (front, 3rd from left).

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Free Lunch (the Law of the Conservation of Karma)

The three fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, "...who spin, draw out and cut the thread of Life ... as they triumph over the fallen body of Chastity." (Wikipedia 23 April 2014). I don't know what Chastity's got to do with it. Death triumphs over Chastity? Doesn't make sense to me.

The fact that anything exists at all is a very good sign pointing to the basic fairness, rightness and justice of Everything*.

You can get a free lunch, you just gotta know where to look (Everywhere and forever, all at once.)

According to philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, “god” is the answer to the question about why anything exists. The question arises from the contradiction between a reality in which things exist, and the idea that non-existence is easier than existence. In contrast to non-existence, which requires nothing, “everything that is possible demands to exist,” as Leibniz puts it.

But the fact that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people is a bad sign, pointing in the other direction, to the basic randomness and meaninglessness of Everything.

This post is about how that apparent contradiction is resolved by the Law of the Conservation of Karma.

In physics, the Law of the Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can only be changed from one form to another.

Similarly, the Law of the Conservation of Karma states that justice (karma) cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another. In other words, everyone gets their just desserts, maybe not at the time or in the form anticipated, but at one stage or another, at one place or another, in one way or another. Everyone gets what’s coming to them, sooner or later, here or there, once or twice, in one lump or many.

The Guts and Toes of the Meaning of Life

Engraving by an unknown artist first appearing in Camille Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888). The image depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond. The caption (not shown here) translates to 'A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet...'

We’ll get to the meaning (and purpose) of life later, but first we need to talk about guts, toes and strings.

Physicists tie guts and toes with string. Or to put it less simply, string theory is seen as a promising way to integrate grand unifying theories (GUTs) with theories of everything (TOEs).

GUTs are about unifying three of the four forces that physicists call fundamental. “Fundamental” means there are no others. "Fundamental" means that across the whole of the universe are no forces, powers or energies other than the fundamental four: electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force, and gravity.

Every force is one of the four fundamentals or is based on one of the four. Centripetal and centrifugal forces, for example, are just gravity in the round. Nuclear energy is the strong force flexing its muscles. Radioactivity is the weak force at work.

Electricity and magnetism have been unified: they are different aspects of the same underlying force, electromagnetism.

Electromagnetism and the weak force have been unified into the electroweak. To put it less simply: electricity, magnetism and the weak force are thought to have once been the same thing, or at least, different aspects of the same thing.

And you're not wrong if you think this is all weird, strange or abnormal. In fact, renormalizing the electroweak was how three nerds (Glashow, Salam and Weinberg) earned their Nobel Prize.

The strong force keeps it all together. What is it? It is ordinary matter (as opposed to non-ordinary matter, called dark matter, which is believed to exist but about which we know very little). Specifically, the strong force binds protons and neutrons into nucleons, and confines quarks to their hadrons. (Jeez! It’s got to be true, you just can’t make this stuff up!)

It is thought that the strong and the electroweak were once unified but went their separate ways shortly after the big bang.

GUTs are about unifying three of the four fundamental forces. TOEs are about unifying all four. Unfortunately, the fourth fundamental force, gravity, has a mind of its own and continues to go its own way. Relatively speaking, of course!

TOEs aim to wrap all four fundamental forces into a nice, neat, tight, little parcel. And the best way to wrap a parcel is with string.

Free Willy in the United States of Personhood

I downloaded this image a number of years ago, can't remember where and can't provide attribution: apologies to the copyright-owner. Actually it's unclear as to whether dolphins were granted legal personhood status, or whether India "merely" banned the use of dolphins in aquatic theme parks. But whatever happened in reality has no bearing on whether cetaceans are or are not persons, or on how they should be treated. This issue is a great example of the relativity of values and the significance of context. The movie, Free Willy, is about the conflict of values and the impact of that conflict on the life of an orca named Willy. Many humans, including myself, believe that cetaceans are as "personable" as humans.

Free will means you are free to choose to do anything that is within your power to do; to think anything that is in your power to think; to experience anything that is within your power to experience. But the most significant freedom of all is the freedom to define your values, relative to the All, relative to Everything and every thing.

That relativity is inescapable, at least for the likes of you and me. You might, for instance, choose diversity as one of your values, except if you were supplying tomatoes to a supermarket, in which case you would want all your tomatoes to be the same size, weight and color. A supplier of tomatoes to a supermarket would prefer conformity to diversity, at least in relation to supplying tomatoes. To echo the "location, location, location" of realtors: context, context, context!

Banquet for bacteria

From Einstein we learn about the relativity that applies to aspects of time and space. But relativity is even more absolute than Einstein imagined! Everything is relative, including the meaning of words, the meaning of meaning, and meaning itself. The truth we assign to things is never true from all perspectives.

Consider, for example, a picnic in the park. Mum, dad, and a couple of kids, sitting on a blanket eating sandwiches, boiled eggs, and other picnic food. One of the kids is unable to eat all of the food ze has taken (the "...eyes bigger than your stomach..." syndrome). Ze surreptitiously disposes of the uneaten food by throwing it into the bushes.

One of the parents notices and criticises the child along these lines: "Don't throw that food away, there are people starving in XYZ country. What a waste! I paid good money for that. And another thing, haven't I told you not to litter? You are spoiling it for everyone, making a mess like that!"

no vacancies: the universe is fully stuffed

The shortest way between two points may not always be a straight line. Sci-Fi spaceship engines warp, fold or curve space so folk can get from A to B without going through all the space between.

And likewise, in the real world (whatever that is) a host of physicists, mathematicians, cosmologists, geometers and other horse-thieves are firmly of the belief that space has shape. They say it can be flat, curved, even foamy!

They may be right, but I just can't get my head around curved space: I can't visualise it. What happens to the matter, the material, the stuff that's occupying that curved space? Does the stuff get curved too? They say that gravity warps space: I can't visualise that either.

in defense of pantheism

This post responds to the issues raised in the post, "Pantheism: it's like Atheism by James Cameron" at Mitch Sullivan's blog, "the big A Word".

The main monotheistic religions hold that deity is transcendent, stands outside of time and space, separate and distinct from creation and the various parts of creation, material, immaterial and otherwise. How can God be outside the world, and omnipresent in it? Beats me! Please let me know if you find out.

There are many versions of pantheism. Crudely and simplistically it's a belief structure in which deity is believed to be "immanent" in time and space; "indwelling" zir own creation including all parts, so that deity is believed to be present in me, you, that rock over there, the planet, etc. But more than present, more than being inside or within, deity comprises creation, is you, me etc. And vice versa: that you are, I am, the girl next door is deity. So that deity is not merely inside or within, deity identifies as creation. Deity is creation and creation is deity. The two are one.