"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. :>)