FOCUS: The Universe

On the Known and Unknown Universe
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

"When the cartographers of the Middle Ages came to the end of the world as they knew it, they wrote: 'Beware: Dragons Lurk Beyond Here.'" - William Manchester, A World Lit Only By Fire

"The scientist, Roger Pemrose, was walking with some friends and talking animatedly. He fell silent only in order to cross the street. 'I remember that - as I was crossing the street - an incredible idea came to me,' Pemrose said. 'But, as soon as we reached the other side, we picked up where we left off, and I couldn't remember what I thought of just a few seconds earlier.' Late in the afternoon, Pemrose began to feel euphoric - without knowing why. 'I had the feeling that something had been revealed to me,' he said. He decided to go back over every minute of the day, and - when he remembered the moment when he was crossing the street - the idea came back to him. This time, he wrote it down. It was the theory of black holes, a revolutionary theory in modern physics. And it came back to him because Pemrose was able to recall the silence that we always fall into as we cross a street." - Paulo Coelho

"In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, Bell Lab scientists, were modifying a radio antenna so it could be used to receive signals from an early communications satellite. They tried to eliminate sources of background radio signals, but no matter what they did, they still heard residual static-like ‘noise.’ Their genius was to make the connection between the noise and new theories about big bang. They became the first people to hear the birth of the universe, winning Nobel prizes in the process." - Rick Harriman, Synectics Inc.

"A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'" - Stephen Crane

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy." - Albert Einstein

"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." - Woody Allen

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

"The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man." - Jack Handey

"If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle." - Dave Barry

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr., High Flight

The Known Universe



Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files


From FORA TV
The Dance of the Universe: Are We Alone with Father George Coyne & Lynn Rothschild (Video)

From FORA TV
The Black Hole War with Leonard Susskind (Video)

From FORA TV
Death by Black Hole with Neil deGrasse Tyson (Video)

From FORA TV
Confessions of an Alien Hunter with Seth Shostak (Video)

From FORA TV
God and the Universe with Ian Morison (Video)

From The New York Times
Heaven and Nature by Russ Douthat

From NASA
Cosmology: The Study of the Universe (PDF)

ODDS & ENDS: Faces, Spaces, Places, Measuring What Matters, Hiding Our Best Self, Bright-Sided, Tuesdays with Morrie

On Faces
"I only know that when I make eye contact with one (black widow spiders), I feel a deep physical shudder of revulsion, and of fear, and of fascination; and I am reminded that the human style of face is only one accidental pattern among many, some of the others being quite drastically different. I remember that we aren’t alone. I remember that we are the norm of goodness and comeliness only to ourselves. I wonder about how ugly I look to the spider." - David Quammen, Flight of the Iguana

"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts." - John Steinbeck

On Spaces
“Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured.” - Jim Loehr

On Places
"You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bowl, but on a candlestick; and it gives light to all that are in the house." – Jesus, Matthew 5

"A city man is at home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die." - Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal

"The megacities, like cancer, have appeared with their great extremes of poverty and wealth, their isolation from what was called the natural world with its rivers, forests, silent dawns and nights. The new populations will live in hives of concrete on a diet of film, television and the Internet. We are what we eat. We are also what we see and hear. And we are in the midst of our one and only life." – James Salter, Once Upon a Time, Literature. Now What?

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed – they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock." - Orson Wells, The Third Man

"The thought was banal, and yet somehow, as happened every now and then, it took him by surprise and profoundly disappointed him. It was absurd, but underlying his experience of the world, at some deep Precambrian stratum, was the expectation that someday – but when? – he would return to the earliest chapters of his life. It was all there – somewhere – waiting for him. He would return to the scenes of his childhood, to the breakfast table of the apartment of the Graben." - Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

On Measuring What Matters
"Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: 'What does his voice sound like?' 'What games does he like best?' 'Does he collect butterflies?' They ask: 'How old is he?' 'How many brothers does he have?' 'How much does he weigh?' 'How much does his father make?' Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, 'I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof,' they won't be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them 'I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.' Then they exclaim, 'What a pretty house!' That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

On Hiding Our Best Self
"That which you or I think is most unique about ourselves we hide. In ordinary discourse, in the normal state, we share our common self, our superficial self. Yet what is most unique about us is what has the greatest potential for bonding us. When we share our uniqueness, we discover the commonality in greatness that defines everyone on the planet." - Robert E. Quinn

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there." - Henry Miller, Sexus

Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided


Mitch Albom at Black & Blue Bash 2007



From Jewish World Review
What the Chicago Olympic Failure Must Teach Jewry by Joseph Aaron

From Forbes.com
The Most Painfully Annoying Business Jargon by Christopher Steiner

From Cluetrain.Com
The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger (Entire text)