Mantra
November 9th, 2011
I will one day die. On that day I will wake with peace in my heart. I will possess in it love. For myself, for my family, for my enemies. For everyone bearing across this small planet the millstone of his soul. For my friends there is not ink enough to accommodate my affections and my gratitude.
I will one day die. It will be as the author says as if everybody else died too. But you will be with me. I will be with you.
I will one day die. If there is a paradise it has begun here. In sunlight. In a cup of tea. In laughter that draws attention and cannot be muted. In those moments upon which our greatest invention, language, need not intrude. In our teacher, pain. In our subject, contentment. In our privilege unique in the known universe to look ourselves in the eye and say I am.
Look yourself in the eye and say I am. I will one day die.
Tags: death, jason gumbley, life, mantra
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Marcus Aurelius
October 7th, 2011
The longest life and the shortest amount to the same thing. For the passing minute is every man’s possession, but what has once gone by is not ours.
–Whatever you take in hand, pause at every step to ask yourself, ‘Is it the thought of forfeiting this that makes me dread death?’
–Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.
~J
Tags: death, life, marcus aurelius, philosophy
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The Speed Of Two Lights
September 23rd, 2011
So like Einstein is rolling over in his like grave or something? I guess Dr. Hawking won the debate. But I kid. Here’s a link to the report (PDF) recently published by CERN, in which they explain certain anomalous results that indicate the possibility of a neutrino travelling faster than the speed of light. If you recognize more than ten words in that report then my hat is off to you.
A friend of mine interns for COSMOS in Australia. After hearing what he had to say on the matter, I skimmed to the report’s conclusion. And when I say skim, I mean like a bullet skims the ground to reach its target. The position of the researchers involved is very clearly awed and excited, but also reserved and skeptical. They have not abandoned the scientific method:
Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results.
I repost this in the hopes that we will not jump to independent conclusions, as the media has done. They turn questions and conjectures into statements. It gets attention, that’s their job. Let’s not confuse product for fact. They aren’t physicists and neither are you or I. A few of us have read A Brief History Of Time, that’s about it. Hell, the janitors at CERN probably have doctorates. Einstein’s expansions on the theory of relativity weren’t confirmed by experiment for years after he proposed them. (I use the term confirm loosely, forgive me scientists. By which I mean Phill.) If his theories are incorrect, they still won’t be overturned in a matter of a days. The revolutions of earthlings aren’t so predictable as the revolutions of their earth.
If it is true, of course, we could be hitting the crest of some serious revolutionary action. Einstein and his special theory are engrained in our culture. Of course, just because one of his proposals might not be entirely accurate doesn’t invalidate everything the man did. Still it’d be a shock to our collective system to amend his stature by even a hair. Even if physics seems marginal in our daily lives we’d still feel it.
Whether the anomalous results are factual or mistaken, this will no doubt advance our understanding of light. That has to mean something. I wonder what it would look like if we graphed man’s understanding of light from the first artificial fire to the present day. I wonder. The wonder is all around us, as they say. Here’s hoping our attention span is enough to hear this one out.
~J