Monday, January 11, 2016

I Could Never Get the Hang of Thursdays

When I was a young buck and (far too) full of myself, I found an ideal way to put a pin in the balloon of my own ego was to stare up into a clear night sky filled with stars.

I never got distracted trying to calculate the distance their light had travelled to reach me or the time such a journey took; not because I didn't appreciate the math needed for such calculations but because I was so self-absorbed that lesson was lost on me.

Rather, I tried to place myself in the universe. I think (hope?) to some extent we all do that. For me, life is perhaps best defined as figuring out where I belong in a world where everyone else, consciously and unconsciously, is trying to do the same thing.

I think our efforts just became far more difficult but also way more wondrous.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Observable_universe_logarithmic_illustration.png
This is the work of Pablo Carlos Budassi and you can read and marvel at his creation, perhaps or because he is a musician and not a mathematician here. Helps me remember my favorite quote from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 'time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so.' Guten Appetit.
-bill kenny  

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