Conrad Memories from the Future

Padmini has brought us a topic oh-so-Indian today and I sit at the disadvantage of being surrounded by Indians as I write upon it.  Surrounded by Indians?  Where have I heard that before?  But, I digress ... I am neither Indian nor Hindu (in this life), but I rather like many of their concepts of the universe.  It is simply a statement that not being born to that tradition and teaching, I can only approach the ideas from a Western perspective, being American.  So, rather than being helpless, I approach it from the perspective I am born and bred to, the study of Physics, using its understandings to approach one of the core concerns for all beings, the question of what does all that happens to me come from and what is its meaning. Padmini picks the dilemma well, for it is argument between the accidental universe with randomly created physical laws and results and the argument of meaning in greater depth in the affairs of man.  In the first case, events just h...

  A true global pandemic in modern times is a rarity, especially one claiming so many lives, although the HIV/AIDS pandemic has claimed 30 million lives.  Each brings humanity itself into a glaringly sharp focus hidden during calmer times. AIDS is a nasty example of how we cheaply and cruelly protect our psyches.  We compartmentalized and made it a gay man's disease and thus, those of us straight could conveniently set aside emotional trauma.  It affects THEM, not us! That cheap compartmentalization comes with a price, a price of bigotry and cruelty, a price of the loss of part of our human compassion.  It is easier for those who have already compromised those qualities, but it is common to many.  It is especially easier to cast evil and stress onto someone we already have decided was evil anyway, such as the judgment of evil on the gay man. Covid-19 had an evil straw man in America, the entire Chinese population.  Every time it is referred to by a lea...

  Many sit in awe of our universe, me included, and others think it is ... well, it just is!  It colors our view of space exploration, an expensive proposition from either view.  After all, don't we have enough problems right here on Earth to deal with without some pie in the sky (or beyond) expenditure with no guarantee of either success or tangible benefit? Personally, I have learned to understand and even appreciate the priorities of those questioning such expenditures.  It has taken me a while to get past my childhood dreams of someday watching our trips to outer space and learning what we find there.  And when I'm talking about childhood, I'm talking about pretty early childhood coming from my primary grades.  When I learned to read, I read my Golden Books on the Solar System and my Willey Ley books on our first trip to the moon.  College years honed my appreciation of the actual science behind that exploration - I was a Physics major - and simult...

  Above you see the look of the times.  It has taken its toll on all of us.  The picture is of individuals, individuals working to be brave - although a bit foolish, for they are too close together - and this is what we see continuously and have for over a year.  Individuals under stress, coping. But, individuals together form families, form businesses, form communities, form nations, form a world.  Individuals compete for life meaning and sustenance and space with other individuals, with other families, with other ... and on and on.  They also cooperate all up the line in a constant give and take that composes the activity of life. Saints are born from the giving of life to others, despots from its theft.  Every level of organization continuously participates in the dance.  A pandemic puts all this in perspective, for all the human striving, something so simple as a mindless virus exposes vulnerabilities organic, social and international.  I...

Sales and politics have many nuances and definitions, but for the purposes of today's topic, I narrow them to these two definition from Merriam Webster: Sales : the development of a belief in the truth , value, or desirability of: gaining acceptance of. Politics : the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy. So, politics is really a specialized, focused type of sales.  A politician is a developer of belief in the value or desirability of a governmental policy and a developer of the belief in the truth of his/her supported positions to the public, to his/her constituents.  So, that obviously being fair, how could such a system ever go wrong!? The rub comes when the belief in truth isn't actually the full factual truth.  If I convince you to buy a used car from me by convincing you to believe that the engine is in perfect condition with at least 100.000 miles left in its life, it does you no good if, after paying a reasonable price for a car...

 I'm retired.  Newly retired. Not that anyone is counting, but I've been retired for ... ... approximately. Breaktime?  You know how it is when you are new at something and trying to build a new psychological infrastructure.  It is amateur hour for a while.  You're used to having markers and mileposts indicating flow and directionality.  You go to work on these days.  You go to your mother-in-law's house to care for her on the weekends.  Your wife comes home at a certain time from her work. What happens when those markers and mileposts are removed, erased?  You retire.  Your mother-in-law has a heart attack that very day and your are now staying with your wife at her mother's mobile home while you shepherd her through rehab and relocation to a care facility.  And now you settle in to all those hobbies and things you never had the time to develop. And a novel coronavirus appears and it seems like it is causing local trouble in China....

We've all felt something just beyond our reach, something we almost saw, an impression that seemed to come from nowhere.  Is someone there?  Hello?  And, isn't it interesting how much more intense that gets when the sun has set and we are alone!  We are alone, aren't we??? The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary  identifies  midnight  as the time when witches are supposedly active.  This is popularly known as the witching hour!  Supposedly, this is when the veil between the worlds is the thinnest, when the bleedthroughs are common, when spirits can migrate and shadows can be cast.  It is the time of magic! On the calendar, it is the death of one day, the birth of a new one.  Sometimes the opposite of the birth of magic, it can be the loss just as well, the coach reverting to a pumpkin, the horses to mice.  Fortunately, some things like glass slippers seem to survive the transition, although the magic that allows you to dance in them ...