Boom

There are a couple of planes overhead playing at war games from the sound of it and its making me nervous.

In other news I am having the hardest time concentrating on work now its all winding down.

Just as the Sun and planets were born, they will eventually die.

In 5 billion years, the Sun will cool and bloat outward to many times its current diameter (becoming a red giant) before casting off its outer layers as a planetary nebula and leaving behind a stellar corpse, a white dwarf. The planets will follow the Sun's course; in the far distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually whittle away at the Sun's retinue of planets. Some will be destroyed, others will be ejected into interstellar space, but ultimately, over the course of trillions of years, the Sun will be left alone with no other bodies in orbit.

I am sad. I'd like to be alive to watch this. Perhaps I am mistaken and there is an afterlife. I will seat myself in the front row and watch forever. If death is like that, how peaceful it will be. To drift and watch forever.

Hopeless

Only I would look at the photo above at the two scientists responsible for Russia's fusion bomb and the tokamak and say "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, the dogggggggy"

Lysenko

My I am restless. But the last post made me want to burst out about Lysenko.

How will I explain what I feel and think about Lysenko. You go read about him. Maybe you'll feel the sadess and despair at so much stupidity and wonder if the man believed it at all...
poor Vavilov. What use was a medal given in your name 15-20 years after your death.

Perhaps, Oparin, you oughtn't have... It's okay, I still love you.

Alexander Oparin

Helped his career out by supporting the pseudo-scientific theories Lysenko and someone else came up with, choosing the "party" line of thought. Should I feel bad? No, he did a smart thing. He was plenty brilliant, came up with a lot of stuff on abiogenics and some wikipedia writer is lavish enough to call him the "Darwin of the 20th century" There is no evidence to show he really believed any of the crap Lysenko said. His research was on different lines altogether. So yeah, Oparin, you'll do.

Call me amoral.

(P.S. On hitting spell check I see Lysenko is an acceptable word but Oparin isn't. Odd)

Wilson Cycle

Vaalbara
Ur
Kenorland
Columbia
Rodinia
Pannotia
Pangaea

I lay sleepless for hours last night imagining the earth through all the years.

A bad poem about the fossil I hope to become

Now a little bit of land
A bit of rock spilt out of hand
Moving with the flow
With dead things deep under me.

The first years are young
The soil red
The ocean green
like Mars alive

Then the years are billions
I am ossifying in rock
And the water is deep
Far above my head

It's getting exciting

I was reading over the geological ages and looking at the continental drift. I feel like I'm reading a thriller I've read before, I know the ending but I can't quite remember how it got there. I am at the Permian at the moment. Look at all the tetrapods and things. It's beginning to look familiar.

This is all so horribly exciting. I can't put it down.

Music of Creation

A long time ago, I was in a book shop reading the Silmarillion, reading about the mythos of the creation of the world. Iluvatar began the music from which everything is made. the bookshop was playing this exquisite violin piece. I went in a hurry to the nearest counter to ask what was playing but the person there was incompetent and couldn't tell me anything. I should have been smart and gone to the music section. today as I was walking through the mall the *same*, the SAME music was playing, after almost 10 years I heard it.

Again the impossibility of knowing what was playing over the mall broadcast system. Argh. Do I have to wait another 10 years?

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons. - Thurber


I have frequently thought this must be true. I am glad to see that I am in the best of company. So honoured.

Does it make you unfit to live a normal life when you are dwelling on strange ideals?
Do you go through comparing your real life experiences with those imagined? And is that a bad thing always?
I am at peace listening to a flute solo right now as I type this. If I take the headphones off the clicking of keyboards around me rises to a crescendo and I am lost to this. So, the music is an aid to the peace I am seeking. I could term this as an example of good ideals because it is a real state of mind.
But books? Will I be measuring my life against the quiet heroism of my favourite characters, measure its pace against the despair and speed of plots, matching real relationships with those that heroines and heroes achieve, let my wisest authors set forth the factors I judge my successes against.

I look around me and the realities of things bewilder me.

Funny fiction. My heart calls out for it. I want a book I sneak to class and read under the desk as I stifle giggles. So I'm not in school, the sentiments hold. That is truly the hardest thing to do, be genuinely funny, genuinely laugh aloud funny. I hope I find something on those lines soon. Or I'll just reread my Durrells.

Junk Food

I read a really bad book lately. It's a popular young adult book. It was a huge mess. Again and again I wonder at myself: I think I've got taste but then why do I like slumming it so much. I met some of my uber literary friends on saturday before Venkat's farewell. I had nothing I had read that I could confess to. I didn't care but why do I dwell on things I know which I don't really like. Does the thrill make up for it? It's just sensational to be inflamed with fear, wonder and love. Escapist, unreal, shallow.
And if one does want sensation there is DH Lawrence, Colette, Maupassant. I think its time to go on a detox diet of reading.

Phoney

I can't help feeling guilty. I got hijacked into a semi-date with a guy I don't really know and feel guilty that I almost enjoyed myself. Sure I had plenty of snarky moments with myself when I was feeling like a bitch for laughing internally and loving it; but that really added to the fun of the "date".
But I feel guilty just the same. I should know better.