The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - the time to remember those who served their country and possibly gave their life to defend what they hold most sacred in their heart. I salute those who came before and after me and especially those who currently serving.
As a veteran of the Persian Gulf War, I am honored to have people remembering what I did for those years I was on active duty. But my sacrifice was small, not anywhere near as great as those who didn't return. My thoughts are with those who made the greatest sacrifice on the altar of freedom and those who are currently standing on the wall to defend us.
Thank you one and all for keeping America free from all enemies, foreign and domestic. No matter what branch of service and no matter what you do, thank you for keeping our country safe.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
scrum-deli-icious
Don't these cupcakes look amazing? I'm getting hungry just looking at them. I gotta go get some sugar in me now...
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
losing my religion
No, I'm not going to comment on the famous R.E.M. song or how it was written or anything like that. If you want that, go to the wikipedia page for it and read for it yourself. Instead, I'm taking a note from my dear friend Mozzy who has given me yet another wonderful idea to blog about.
The discussion that he started had to do with souls and whether or not animals have them. The original discussion was started with his mother and he did a fine job of recapping it for me in an email and it got me to thinking. My religion as of late has been ALL over the place, from agnostic to atheist and nothing in between but perhaps this view that Mozzy has will help me to define my spirituality. So after thinking about what he had to say, I've thrown off the previous notions of religion that I've had and decided to go with something that makes a lot more sense to me.
In his discussion with his mother, Mozzy brought up the idea of Star Wars and 'the force'. His idea was that all living things give off energy vibrations and those can be sensed by the universe. People who have ESP or paranormal senses may be able to pick up on the vibrations of previously living people that the rest of us are unable to tune into - kinda like how dogs can sense higher pitches of sound than humans. I found a connection between the two in my mind. This connectivity really struck a chord with me and after thinking about this for the better part of almost 2 weeks, I've come up with something that I can grasp in terms of spirituality.
As a Physics teacher, I see how the universe is described through the beauty of its simplicity. Newton's laws of motion, Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism, Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle - they are all simple in theory and explanation. Much like Ockham's Razor, which is often paraphrased as "all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best", the description of everyday events by Physics are beautifully simplistic.
Current theories that are emerging from the field of Physics includes the idea of a unifying theory that will attempt to explain the way universe acts completely. Einstein searched for this, a grand unification theory, that would tie together the cosmos and the atom, his theory of general relativity with the realm of quantum mechanics. Don't worry if you don't know why those two don't work together, just know that they don't at this moment in time. Theoretical physicists have been working on a unifying theory, called string theory. It was when Mozzy said "vibrations" and "energy" in his discussion with his mother that my new spirituality became apparent.
String theory is the idea that the smallest particle of matter is actually not matter but a vibrating string of energy. Take the atom and break it down into smaller parts and you get protons, neutrons, and electrons. Break those down and you get quarks. Keep dividing subatomic particles enough and string theory predicts that you wouldn't have matter at all, rather a vibrating string of energy. Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle (you all know it as E=mc2) fits perfectly into this idea (at least in my head it does) and how everything is interconnected.
For those of you whom have seen a movie called The Secret, you will note that the ideology put forth in the movie suggests that there is a natural harmonic to the universe and positive thoughts will yield positive results in life. While I don't subscribe to that specific philosophy, it does relate to the concept of interconnectedness of everything and has some aspects that I agree with. The book/movie talks about the 'law of attraction' where good thoughts attract good events/outcomes where negative ones will attract the same. While this sounds a bit hokey and many feel it falls into the realm of cult status, it does start to blend in scientific ideas with the parts of the universe we do not understand (the supernatural). Bare with me, let me try to explain.
If our body and mind is composed of energy, as E=mc2 demonstrates, and the energy we are composed of vibrating strings, then we each have a natural vibration - called a harmonic. Scientists over the years have also been great musicians as they believed that the universe was just a grand symphony, only out of our auditory range. Just like musical notes don't always work together well (dischord), people do not always get along. Is this due to the idea that their energies are disharmonious? Do people not have soulmates but rather have harmonious energies? If a person alters their mental energy by thinking different thoughts, do they possess the ability to change the energy that physically surrounds them? The Secret argues for this, I'm a bit more skeptical than that.
In a spiritual sense, this all ties together for me in cosmology - the study of the cosmos, not makeup application (that's cosmetology). There is a debate about the fate of the universe and the three possibilities are open, closed, and flat. Two of the three don't make sense to me (open and flat) but closed does. A closed universe suggests that the gravity of the universe will eventually pull everything back to one single point (a singularity) and the Big Crunch will possibly lead to another Big Bang. I like this idea. It says that the universe is like a giant balloon that is continually expanding and contracting, creating a universe over and over again in this process. It tells me that the entire cosmos is connected and comes down to a single moment of creation from destruction, life from death, the cycle of the Phoenix repeating forever. There is no God for everything is the creator and the created. Everything is interconnected. In essence, energy is divine and if we are all composed of energy, we are all divine.
Organized religion has bothered me in its pretense for years. Too many things are done in the name of an Almighty. Tithes are paid to build a church stripping money from people through guilt, a jihad is started to purge the land of infidels because of fear of difference, genocide is considered acceptable to attain a master race of genetic purity to reach a perfection. To me, organized religion is nothing more than people with charisma writing rules for people who don't think before they act. Why else would stoning by written into the Bible or jihad to non-Muslims in the Koran? People use fear to maintain an organized society and breaking the rules means punishment must be passed down. I think the basic premise of religion had it right - respect all life in all ways. And then man got his hands on it and found it a useful tool to control people to do what they wanted, altering meanings and using their charisma to convince the controlled that they were divine and beyond reproach. Organized religion is nothing more than a power play where people are instructed on how to live their lives because others deem it so. I've got plenty more I would like to say about that but that's for another post...
So it all comes down to this. Every creature, object, atom, whatever you want to look at, is the same at the basic level. The universe is energy and we are made of that energy. If a human has a soul, then so does a dog, a tree, your cell phone, a planet, and the Sombrero Galaxy. From the Big Bang, the cosmos was created and everything is a part of that creation, no matter how big or small, how warm or cold, how apparently life-filled or lifeless. You are connected to every person, bug, windshield, asteroid, drop of water, and star - whether you think you are or not. In cosmology it sometimes is overwhelming to think of how big the cosmos is and what is all out there, it can make you feel completely insignificant in the big picture. But that's not the way I see it anymore; I am a a part of this universe that is unique and will never be experienced again - the universe better enjoy me while I'm here just as I will enjoy it. And just maybe I'll see you all again the next time this universe is created once again. Hope to see ya on the flip side. :-)
The discussion that he started had to do with souls and whether or not animals have them. The original discussion was started with his mother and he did a fine job of recapping it for me in an email and it got me to thinking. My religion as of late has been ALL over the place, from agnostic to atheist and nothing in between but perhaps this view that Mozzy has will help me to define my spirituality. So after thinking about what he had to say, I've thrown off the previous notions of religion that I've had and decided to go with something that makes a lot more sense to me.
In his discussion with his mother, Mozzy brought up the idea of Star Wars and 'the force'. His idea was that all living things give off energy vibrations and those can be sensed by the universe. People who have ESP or paranormal senses may be able to pick up on the vibrations of previously living people that the rest of us are unable to tune into - kinda like how dogs can sense higher pitches of sound than humans. I found a connection between the two in my mind. This connectivity really struck a chord with me and after thinking about this for the better part of almost 2 weeks, I've come up with something that I can grasp in terms of spirituality.
As a Physics teacher, I see how the universe is described through the beauty of its simplicity. Newton's laws of motion, Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism, Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle - they are all simple in theory and explanation. Much like Ockham's Razor, which is often paraphrased as "all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best", the description of everyday events by Physics are beautifully simplistic.
Current theories that are emerging from the field of Physics includes the idea of a unifying theory that will attempt to explain the way universe acts completely. Einstein searched for this, a grand unification theory, that would tie together the cosmos and the atom, his theory of general relativity with the realm of quantum mechanics. Don't worry if you don't know why those two don't work together, just know that they don't at this moment in time. Theoretical physicists have been working on a unifying theory, called string theory. It was when Mozzy said "vibrations" and "energy" in his discussion with his mother that my new spirituality became apparent.
String theory is the idea that the smallest particle of matter is actually not matter but a vibrating string of energy. Take the atom and break it down into smaller parts and you get protons, neutrons, and electrons. Break those down and you get quarks. Keep dividing subatomic particles enough and string theory predicts that you wouldn't have matter at all, rather a vibrating string of energy. Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle (you all know it as E=mc2) fits perfectly into this idea (at least in my head it does) and how everything is interconnected.
For those of you whom have seen a movie called The Secret, you will note that the ideology put forth in the movie suggests that there is a natural harmonic to the universe and positive thoughts will yield positive results in life. While I don't subscribe to that specific philosophy, it does relate to the concept of interconnectedness of everything and has some aspects that I agree with. The book/movie talks about the 'law of attraction' where good thoughts attract good events/outcomes where negative ones will attract the same. While this sounds a bit hokey and many feel it falls into the realm of cult status, it does start to blend in scientific ideas with the parts of the universe we do not understand (the supernatural). Bare with me, let me try to explain.
If our body and mind is composed of energy, as E=mc2 demonstrates, and the energy we are composed of vibrating strings, then we each have a natural vibration - called a harmonic. Scientists over the years have also been great musicians as they believed that the universe was just a grand symphony, only out of our auditory range. Just like musical notes don't always work together well (dischord), people do not always get along. Is this due to the idea that their energies are disharmonious? Do people not have soulmates but rather have harmonious energies? If a person alters their mental energy by thinking different thoughts, do they possess the ability to change the energy that physically surrounds them? The Secret argues for this, I'm a bit more skeptical than that.
In a spiritual sense, this all ties together for me in cosmology - the study of the cosmos, not makeup application (that's cosmetology). There is a debate about the fate of the universe and the three possibilities are open, closed, and flat. Two of the three don't make sense to me (open and flat) but closed does. A closed universe suggests that the gravity of the universe will eventually pull everything back to one single point (a singularity) and the Big Crunch will possibly lead to another Big Bang. I like this idea. It says that the universe is like a giant balloon that is continually expanding and contracting, creating a universe over and over again in this process. It tells me that the entire cosmos is connected and comes down to a single moment of creation from destruction, life from death, the cycle of the Phoenix repeating forever. There is no God for everything is the creator and the created. Everything is interconnected. In essence, energy is divine and if we are all composed of energy, we are all divine.
Organized religion has bothered me in its pretense for years. Too many things are done in the name of an Almighty. Tithes are paid to build a church stripping money from people through guilt, a jihad is started to purge the land of infidels because of fear of difference, genocide is considered acceptable to attain a master race of genetic purity to reach a perfection. To me, organized religion is nothing more than people with charisma writing rules for people who don't think before they act. Why else would stoning by written into the Bible or jihad to non-Muslims in the Koran? People use fear to maintain an organized society and breaking the rules means punishment must be passed down. I think the basic premise of religion had it right - respect all life in all ways. And then man got his hands on it and found it a useful tool to control people to do what they wanted, altering meanings and using their charisma to convince the controlled that they were divine and beyond reproach. Organized religion is nothing more than a power play where people are instructed on how to live their lives because others deem it so. I've got plenty more I would like to say about that but that's for another post...
So it all comes down to this. Every creature, object, atom, whatever you want to look at, is the same at the basic level. The universe is energy and we are made of that energy. If a human has a soul, then so does a dog, a tree, your cell phone, a planet, and the Sombrero Galaxy. From the Big Bang, the cosmos was created and everything is a part of that creation, no matter how big or small, how warm or cold, how apparently life-filled or lifeless. You are connected to every person, bug, windshield, asteroid, drop of water, and star - whether you think you are or not. In cosmology it sometimes is overwhelming to think of how big the cosmos is and what is all out there, it can make you feel completely insignificant in the big picture. But that's not the way I see it anymore; I am a a part of this universe that is unique and will never be experienced again - the universe better enjoy me while I'm here just as I will enjoy it. And just maybe I'll see you all again the next time this universe is created once again. Hope to see ya on the flip side. :-)
Sunday, November 02, 2008
something from my past
I was cruising around on flickr and came across this interesting shot of the Kubuswooning (Cube Houses) in Rotterdam. Cool place to take a tour of, if you get the chance but then again, not many people take tours of Rotterdam!
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