With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
2001-11-16 - 1:09 a.m.
I had a nice blast from the past today, a return to my true nerd days. My officemate Julius arranged to have astrophysicist Charles Liu give a talk on Gamma Ray Bursters. I used to go to lectures like that all the time. Charles was really my kind of guy, a batnose nerd. How could I not love someone who started of a discussion of Gamma Rays by talking about the Incredible Hulk? He even sang the theme song from the wonderful though awfully animated sixties cartoon. He had prepared a whole presentation with PowerPoint then this computer crashed; he had to vamp in on the dry erase board. He did a good job and drew some cool pics. I was very pleasantly surprised to see the large turnout for the talk. Even one of my remedial math students was there.
After the show I talked to him for a bit about astrophysics, physicist whimsy, and comics. Yes I said whimsy. People in the social sciences tend to give very complicated multi-syllabic terms for commonplace things. Physicists tend to do the opposite. I think it is because they don't feel they have to prove themselves. Thus they call hypothetical Weakly Interactive Massive Particles, WIMPS. The cross-sectional area of a Proton is called a shed because in a particle accelerator it's as easy to hit as the broadside of a barn. The cross-sectional area of an electron is called a shed because it is smaller than a barn. A social scientist might have called it an electromagnetic deprived zone. Physicists just call it a black hole. The basic particles of the universe are called Quarks from a nonsense poem found it Finnegan's Wake. There are plenty of more examples.
We also talked about how they ruined the Hulk when they made it a live action show. That led to a discussion of depicting gays in comics. Apparently in the early 80s there was a gay member of Alpha Force, the Canadian spin-off of the X-Men. I really wish I could have talked to him some more. He works at the Hayden Planetarium, next time I go I might look him up.
That was my big fun for the day. I also went to the Knick game I ended up coming home from school with just enough time to change, check my email then I went right back into the city. I wanted to talk to Carey on the phone and the only way I could make the timing work was to go back to the City early and call her from my office. Murphy's Law took over though and she got home too late.
Once again the Knicks benefited from my presence and one. I think that is far more important than the fact that Miami was missing its three best players.
Now for the moment you've all been dreading, the poem of the day. This is my second nerd poem in a row.
Gamma Ray Bursters
First we wondered what you are.
Are you the remains of an exploding star?
Black holes colliding might be the key.
Even neutron stars have enough energy./P>
You were discovered looking for bombs .
You set of all the nuclear alarms.
But you came from deep in outer space..
You had nothing to do with the arms race.
We search for clues of your history..
Your essence is still a mystery.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile 2001-11-16
