My diary, for friends and myself, if you don't know me -- go

I need to sort this out

In my mind, I see the wonders in our always increasing, never-ever ending wonderful universe.

There's more here... I've been looking at NASA's picture of the day just-about everyday lately. I've found solace for the worries I've had, increasing worries, over the Israeli human rights war. The US's and European part in just standing by while Israelis assassinate people with helicopter gunships, and Islamic fundamentalists kill themselves to kill others in suicide attacks.

Carl Sagan: Reflections on a Mote of Dust:

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

We're just so small. Having done a bit of formal media studies, I know what TV news can do -- it's long term effects. It can desensitise. It can change black to white. It can lead us.

Look at the ferocity.

Let's desensitise.

Let's desensitise. Zoom out

Can you get a sense of scale? Can you see that there is no god?
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Esme's birthday 18th Sept.

It'll be her third birthday. She ran quickly from one room to another, shouting, "quick, quick, run fast to birthday." Her little arms zipping up and down as she runs in an over exaggerated action.

Shall we get a bouncy castle? Will we play blind man's buff? Who's coming?

Bradley is teething

He wakes up at night and, unusually for him he needs to be cuddled and patted and co-coo'd to. 10 months old. I rock him down stairs at all hours. Tonight we watched the new footage of the plane zapping into the first building. We heard the Pakistanis cheering. We know they too, as well as Israel, have nukes.

Yesterday was my Mum's birthday

I always forget, Amanda brought a bottle of perfume, and put it down in front of me. That was yesterday afternoon. I called her, and Esme sang

Happy Birthday to you

Happy Birthday Nanna

Happy Birthday to you

And chattered on about something - I missed it or cannot recall right now. I was watching the second crash from several angles. My Mum said, "phowr, she's got a lot to say," when I took the phone. She is talking much more now, still missing out the first syllable of a word, and talking too fast for herself. But still, we understand her. "Do you want to speak to your Dad?" He'll be watching the news says I. "All afternoon -- terrible isn't it."

Do you know what sheets and voids are? Or, where and what are the nearest superclusters?

meaningOfLife: Computing the Universe: X-Ray Clusters in a Cold + Hot Dark Matter Universe

Gods could do this?

See more here http://zeus.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080/chdm_script.html

Why? Can they create sheets and voids? And they let 10,000 people die in the most awful of deaths? Can they condone and create the climate for such?

Apparently not.

At least it is man who says that they are working for gods, that they have gods on their side. Man created the climate. What the universe is and how it is here is not a matter for gods. Not when you consider the size, the sheer fucking scale. The impossibility of it.

The plane on the right is crashing into the middle of the building. I know it looks like the top.

The red and green smoke patterns are sheets and voids. The little particles are galaxies.

Scale?

I know that the falling man will one day be identified, and will have family. But seeing the scale, him and the building reminded me of this page... The building is 450 meters tall?

Cosmic Distance Scales - The Solar System: "The Earth is about 1.3 cm in diameter (the size of a grape). The Moon orbits about a foot away. The Sun is 1.5 meters in diameter (about the height of a man) and 150 meters (about a city block) from the Earth. Jupiter is 15 cm in diameter (the size of a large grapefruit) and 5 blocks away from the Sun. Saturn (the size of an orange) is 10 blocks away; Uranus and Neptune (lemons) are 20 and 30 blocks away. A human on this scale is the size of an atom; the nearest star would be over 40,000 km away."

If the man's head falling from the building is the Sun, on a comparative scale a pepper corn would be the earth. 26 yards/meters away. Pluto would be twice the distance he is to fall. The Thousand-Yard Model

I know Moussies

Muslims. I married a 2nd generation Indain girl. Her brother in law was Pakistani. My old landlord, of 10 years, was a bus driver and Muslim.

His son was 17 last time we spoke, I saw him go to the Mosque when he was 8 or 9.

I think we were close. We knew each other well.

I don't know any Christians.

Not real Christians. Maybe they hide it better. Probably, many I know would say that there must be something out there, something more than this, something after this, somewhere where the soul goes.

I wonder if it's genetics, something past down the generations. Is that the afterlife?

Children, we always look there

So, my daughter dancing to her little Happy Birthday song. Me watching every angle of the crashes. Children will believe anything. Even when they appear to be adults, it takes so much to change their opinions, their accrued personalities.

Damage done now, to a three year old, will reverberate down the generations. Just like pedophiles, just like religious crazies who believe they go to heaven.

2:57:43 am

Ehud Barak seems to know what it will take, "lives and maybe half a generation." That's what he just said on BBC TV. Look at the names on this list of past Prime Ministers of Israel... War-like names.

How long is half a generation? Till my son is how old?

Long-term View : Characteristics : Intro to SD : SD Gateway: "A planning horizon somewhere in the middle may be both necessary and realistic. Some experts have suggested that as long as each generation looks after the next -- roughly 50 years -- each succeeding generation will be taken care of. 2 Of course, if an effect in the yet further future is foreseen, then it too can be taken into account. No generation can be expected to guarantee results it cannot foresee; but equally, none should be allowed to ignore those it can."

21 years appears to be a generation. So, Ehud Barak thinks it'll take 10 years -- a ten year war. Maybe, if Israel wasn't involved. With them, and I presume they want to side with the US, and Europe will side with the US, I think it'll take several generations!

Discuss