Did anyone like that movie where the two software engineers built the time machine out of cardboard boxes and duct tape then hid it in a storage facility so their wives wouldn't find out and make them take it apart? Some of the interns and Igor watched this movie the other night after work on the new widescreen. I found out what it was about later after I asked Igor what he was laughing at.
I used to be fascinated by quantum physics, now it arrives just short of making my eyes glaze over. Grim sinkholes fulla red herrings abound if you deftly posit an unspoken notion of the possibility existing that anything can happen at anytime for any reason. University tenures of every shape and size built on any theoretical construct as long as it contains plethoral plenitude of ten dollar words arranged in ironic or juxtaposed wordplay fascinating enough for the university dons to imagine classrooms full of wide eyed kids mesmerized by not much more than a whole lotta shilly shally and the timely tossing around of reverenced big names. Most of all the dons imagine the kid's parents or some grant shelling out the dough to keep an eye on those kids for four…six…eight+ years…
Whatever theory results in reliable working hardware renders all theoretical arguments against the theory with the reliable working hardware moot.
The guy who invented the wheel did it like this: he had no slide rule. He saw some rocks rolling down a hill, a landslide or something. Then he noticed the shape of the full moon and the sun (at sunset when it’s easy to look at). Genius cave man that he is figures: if there was a rock shaped like the sun or the moon…then..but loses the rest of it. Some years later, his grandson, hearing these stories from pop about grandad's sun shaped rock being special for some reason, gets the notion to take a rock and bash it with another harder rock until it IS shaped like the sun or the moon... while HIS son sees him doing it. The great grandson gets the notion to lift it off dad's work slab, turn the thing on it’s side and watch it roll. The invention of the wheel. Too bad great-granddad got et by the panther and missed the historic moment.
Or let’s follow our complicated invention-by-way-of-wrangling-the-theory argument. Just reference the achievements of all the proponents of the Piltdown Man during it’s lengthy stretch of academic reverence. Consider the respected scholars of the late 19th century awash in solemn hubris avowing on their pillars of academia that man will never fly. Or those that said the AC motor was a perpetual motion scam. My favorite was the late 19th century academic who said that man should just give up on science because when reflecting on the sheer huge scale of wonders already revealed one can only come to the conclusion there is nothing left to discover. A perfect example of the kind of deductive reasoning plumb from the type of mind that cannot see the forest for all the trees.
The guy who invented the wheel did it like this: he had no slide rule. He saw some rocks rolling down a hill, a landslide or something. Then he noticed the shape of the full moon and the sun (at sunset when it’s easy to look at). Genius cave man that he is figures: if there was a rock shaped like the sun or the moon…then..but loses the rest of it. Some years later, his grandson, hearing these stories from pop about grandad's sun shaped rock being special for some reason, gets the notion to take a rock and bash it with another harder rock until it IS shaped like the sun or the moon... while HIS son sees him doing it. The great grandson gets the notion to lift it off dad's work slab, turn the thing on it’s side and watch it roll. The invention of the wheel. Too bad great-granddad got et by the panther and missed the historic moment.
Or let’s follow our complicated invention-by-way-of-wrangling-the-theory argument. Just reference the achievements of all the proponents of the Piltdown Man during it’s lengthy stretch of academic reverence. Consider the respected scholars of the late 19th century awash in solemn hubris avowing on their pillars of academia that man will never fly. Or those that said the AC motor was a perpetual motion scam. My favorite was the late 19th century academic who said that man should just give up on science because when reflecting on the sheer huge scale of wonders already revealed one can only come to the conclusion there is nothing left to discover. A perfect example of the kind of deductive reasoning plumb from the type of mind that cannot see the forest for all the trees.
I will say, hidden here in my guise, that within twenty years we will see a working test hardware device that will ultimately result to the creation of a "faster"-than-light-with-no-time-dilation craft in the same way a paper airplane ultimately resulted to the American's SR-71. (using the SR-71 as a metaphor for a flying machine that is quite far up the evolutionary ladder from the paper airplane.)
And the Big Bang is this generation’s Piltdown Man.
And the Big Bang is this generation’s Piltdown Man.
