"Collateral Damage"

"Look at you in war--what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!"

"In war? How?"

"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one--on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change ... "

...

" ... the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

...

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars--all over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose--there is no such war in the history of the race."

"Now," said Satan, "you have seen your progress down to the present, and you must confess that it is wonderful--in its way. We must now exhibit the future."

He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life, more devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.

"You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual progress. Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter ...."

[Satan to Theodor in "The Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain, circa 1900]

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[How prophetic of Twain ... a master observer of the nature of the animals called "human" ... /wam]

"Twas thus, by the glare of false Science betray'd,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind;
My thoughts wont to roam, from shade onward to shade,
Destruction before me, and sorrow behind."

- From "The Hermit" by James Beattie, circa 1700's

Bubbles in Space ... and a film's fast pace

When Johanna and her daughter visited, we played with dry ice, helium (balloons) and soap bubbles!

Afterwards, I played around with capturing some pics of the soap bubbles.

So ethereal and so momentary in their beauty ...

And days later, I decided to add some verse which might capture the spirit of the fleeting moment .... as shown ...

(Click to see full size, for best viewing)

A small universe of color and patterns and motion and change and symmetries and beauty and even with representations of ME and ... and then ... and then after a second or two went by ... a fast fade of the coloration ... a bleeding in a fraction of a second, and a silent 'POP!' ... and it was gone. The patterns and "information" having disappeared forever, without a trace.

Except for a single instant of time ... partially captured in the above image of the bubble and of "me" ... in a transformed state, from analog to digital.

But is perhaps "analog" always just an illusion of the mind? Might the universe which we believe is physically "real" and tangible in time and spacial dimensions be instead, at its ultimate foundation, something purely digital? ... just "information" ... ultimately, just a complex composition of (infinite?) digital elements (on/off, yes/no, 1/0, white/black, yin/yang, light/dark) ... similar to the code behind the pseudo-realities on Star Trek's Holodeck ... or as in computer programs or digital images?

But then how did this program get running in the first place?

I would believe somethings may be forever beyond human comprehension ... though that idea is frustrating for the human mind to believe; and that possibility demands more humility than is likely to be found in the natures of scientists and explorers of life and meaning ... since our drive and our passion is to know, and to understand.

Just some thoughts on a colorful soap bubble. :>)

Posting Pictures & Playing [My 1st Blogger post ... posting stuff to try out Blogger's capabilities.]

I took this photo of a girlfriend when the sun was close to setting.

It was at the end of the summer, after having spent a few days and nights cavorting down on Cape Cod.

The days and nights were fun ... but the vacation days went by so fast. The summer eventually cooled and turned to fall. The months went by till December arrived, and the year was soon over. And the relationship too came to an end ... slowly fading out in intensity, like the setting sun ... and then we were no longer seeing one another.

But the nights turn to day. New seasons arrive. New opportunities of discovery always beckon to us. And the following spring and summer were once again filled with new adventures.

A picture of my summer-time girlfriend at her work.

Her amazing feature was her resiliency ... no matter how work would get her down with the petty politics that often occurred there, quick as could be her spirits would brighten back up and she would be happy and vivacious! The company was a high-tech company with ambitious engineers working under demanding program schedules. But she handled them adequately, despite their many shortcomings.


Here is another picture. A picture of my eye taken with a cheap low-rez digital camera in macro mode! Some of the blue color on the right is a reflection of a part of the camera.

I was amazed to see how well the camera took a picture in macro mode! I also did some avi movies in macro mode and they are quite startling and perhaps a bit spooky, as they look like the picture, but there is side to side motion of the eye and eerie oscillations in the dilation of the pupil.

At a later time, I may add a link to one of those avi movies.

Here's Looking At Ya! :>)