Higgs figured it out but they wanted to remove all doubt so they cranked up a hadron to run 'til they had one-- a particle that would prove to be the real article. it would show up in the collider maybe disproving for some the theory of a Provider. it would happen at the CERN somewhere near Lucerne as soon as they could discern what Higgs had already inferred 'though the elusive thing had not yet been interred; but as soon as they were certain that there was higgs-boson behind the curtain they would know that they had sped a proton as fast as a friggin photon, gathering data for the theory to float on, as soon as they could get the thing to go fast enough it would provide proof of energy celebrating mass, not a a catholic one but rather a quirky quarkic one. when at last they had smashed the little thing to get a quark as certifiable as noahs ark-- just a very small piece of cosmology to outweigh all the ethereal theology, when they had found the god particle then journalists could write the article to present the evidence, no longer was it unproven like providence. no not a god of the cosmos but of the inside of the atom, deep down among the neutrinos, hoodwinking the casinos, and they'd wagered that the higgs-boson was one, somewhere inside the atom. now we can forget about the adam, and eve. now we have found the boson so we know how the world goes on. yes it still goes and goes, with all its woes and woes, and toes.
Glass Chimera
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Mr. Roberts' Rule-breaking Ruling
What this country needs is more men and women like Chief Justice John Roberts, whose decision on the Affordable Care dispute broke all the rules of polarizing politics, while reinforcing the reasonable rules of governance, which collectively attest that somehow somewhere along the line we've all got to get together and figure this thing out and run a country where all citizens can live in peace, act on opportunities to prosper, and maintain a reasonable level of healthy living.
Glass half-Full
Glass half-Full
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Health care
One thing we surely know about health care is: everybody needs some sooner or later. We are working on this.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Allegorical vs. Real Characters in Fiction
Now I'm writing a third novel, Smoke.
My son said my fictional characters are formed too heavily upon allegorical concepts instead of real people. I think his assessment is correct. What am I going to do about it? That is the question.
As if that wasn't enough, my dentist was drilling away on my novel bridgework as well. A few weeks ago, he remarked that the first novel had "a lot of characters." That's true. I'm all over the place with these imaginary people, which renders my novel narratives, it seems, too complicated, or scattered, opaque, and therefore not easily accessible to mainstream readers. All true, as I am discovering. I probably knew it all along, to tell the truth, just too stubborn to do anything about it.
But hey, what about the wild-penned luminaries of the past who were venerated, yeah I say unto thee, even catapulted to bookish success, for their obscure story-telling style? I'm talking about Faulkner, Joyce, and. . . well you know the type. Novelists who would cloak all their rambling opi-opuses in arcane symbolism, subtle literary allusions, and stream of consciousness genius run-on sentences which, when read aloud by contemporary poets, always end each phrase with a rising voice intonation as if the speaker had just declared or questioned the most profound literary utterances ever laid out bare and naked for all the world to read and all the New York editors to puzzle over to their hearts' content.
Not to mention their protagonists, who are really dysfunctional savants whose character developments reflect societal manifestations of every misfit's compulsion to prove to the world that the deepest desire of modern men and women is simply to go crazy, flinging off the envelopes and tethers of slavish conformity/morality, and then post the video on Utube.
Speaking of which, video images are taking over the world of communication. Text is dead, unless you want to be one of the elite who actually think. I suppose this very rant is evidence of our literary degeneracy. I'm a drowning man here.
But I digress. Need to get back to the heart of the matter. I need to make my fictional characters more like real people, less like allegorical constructs. I'm working on it.
And good story-telling--I need to work on that too, which is why I just read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island--a great story by a master storyteller. Its a book that steadily intensifies suspense from beginning to end while cultivating reader involvement all along the voyage.
I have learned something valuable from Mr. Stevenson. Maybe now the Europe-crushing clash of 1930ish big ideas (as my son calls them) that I've taken on in the new novel, Smoke, can artfully fade into back story support; then Philip, Nathan, and Tabitha will navigate, in a very believable tale, the perils of a world hung upon the edge of communo-fascist disaster in 1937.
We'll see if I can sail this ship back into the trade winds of reader accessibility. Have a nice day.
My son said my fictional characters are formed too heavily upon allegorical concepts instead of real people. I think his assessment is correct. What am I going to do about it? That is the question.
As if that wasn't enough, my dentist was drilling away on my novel bridgework as well. A few weeks ago, he remarked that the first novel had "a lot of characters." That's true. I'm all over the place with these imaginary people, which renders my novel narratives, it seems, too complicated, or scattered, opaque, and therefore not easily accessible to mainstream readers. All true, as I am discovering. I probably knew it all along, to tell the truth, just too stubborn to do anything about it.
But hey, what about the wild-penned luminaries of the past who were venerated, yeah I say unto thee, even catapulted to bookish success, for their obscure story-telling style? I'm talking about Faulkner, Joyce, and. . . well you know the type. Novelists who would cloak all their rambling opi-opuses in arcane symbolism, subtle literary allusions, and stream of consciousness genius run-on sentences which, when read aloud by contemporary poets, always end each phrase with a rising voice intonation as if the speaker had just declared or questioned the most profound literary utterances ever laid out bare and naked for all the world to read and all the New York editors to puzzle over to their hearts' content.
Not to mention their protagonists, who are really dysfunctional savants whose character developments reflect societal manifestations of every misfit's compulsion to prove to the world that the deepest desire of modern men and women is simply to go crazy, flinging off the envelopes and tethers of slavish conformity/morality, and then post the video on Utube.
Speaking of which, video images are taking over the world of communication. Text is dead, unless you want to be one of the elite who actually think. I suppose this very rant is evidence of our literary degeneracy. I'm a drowning man here.
But I digress. Need to get back to the heart of the matter. I need to make my fictional characters more like real people, less like allegorical constructs. I'm working on it.
And good story-telling--I need to work on that too, which is why I just read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island--a great story by a master storyteller. Its a book that steadily intensifies suspense from beginning to end while cultivating reader involvement all along the voyage.
I have learned something valuable from Mr. Stevenson. Maybe now the Europe-crushing clash of 1930ish big ideas (as my son calls them) that I've taken on in the new novel, Smoke, can artfully fade into back story support; then Philip, Nathan, and Tabitha will navigate, in a very believable tale, the perils of a world hung upon the edge of communo-fascist disaster in 1937.
We'll see if I can sail this ship back into the trade winds of reader accessibility. Have a nice day.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Sun Yat-sen's memory in Hawaii
Sun Yat-sen was a great leader who managed to lead, 101 years ago, the Chinese people out of their dynastic bondage to the Qing empire.
After many previously failed revolutionary attempts, Mr. Sun was able, by 1911, to summon enough organization and gumption among his countrymen to actually accomplish the liberation for which he had spent most of his life preparing.
How he did that amazing work, I don't know. As nearly as I can surmise from a little bit of incidental reading and a movie or two, his role in Chinese history is similar to George Washington's in our American story. But he was not a military man, as Washington had been. Sun was a thinker, a planner, but he was intelligent and perceptive enough to actually put his revolutionary thoughts and plans into effective action. As a result, he is the founder of the Republic of China. So, since he was not a military leader, I perceive that his role in China's liberation from feudalism is more akin to Thomas Jefferson's.
During his education here in Hawaii (where I am now writing), he became familiar with the writings of Jefferson and other proponents of freedom among the opinions of mankind.
Sun Yat-sen was not, however, a politician; his piloting of the fledgling republic was, I think, removed from his grasp during the 1920s and '30s, and supplanted by the chaotic joustings of military warlords. By the time he died in 1925, the nation was in disarray, and hobbled as a collection of feuding factions. When the Japanese invaded in 1937, the two main groups--Communists and Nationalists--had to make an uneasy truce to drive Hirohito's army out. After the war, Mao's People's Liberation Army were finally able to wrest power, by 1948, from Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang army, which Sun Yat-sen's comrades had formed during the 1911 revolution.
Thus did Mao Tse-dung, Deng Xiaoping, and other Communist leaders enforce, at long last, the People's Republic of China.
Not the same as the Republic of China (1911-1948). Nevertheless, it's all a progression of Chinese politics and military victories. From an optimistic American perspective, one might say that Deng Xiaoping had initiated another revolution, a relatively bloodless one (until June 4, 1989.)
As an American, I don't know much Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China, but I am happy to report that a very important part of his ideological development was accomplished during his youthful residence and education in Hawaii. Yat-sen's brother, Sun Mei had moved to Hawaii in 1879, prospered greatly, and was one of the richest men in Hawaii by the turn of the century. During those years, Mei saw to it that his younger brother was brought to the Islands to live in freedom and to be educated.
Sun Mei's wealth included 3900 acres of agricultural land on the slopes of Haleakala volcano (now dormant), on the island of Maui.
Two days ago, Pat and I drove through Sun Mei's formerly vast land-holdings, in the district of Maui called Kula. There, very near the old Sun Mei homeplace, we found this memorial, built to commemorate Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese Republic, who had spent many an hour, many a month over many years, there in reflection, respite, recreation and rest, before later going back to the Middle Kingdom and making world history.
I will end this brief historical observation with a fact that is, to me, and also (I hope) to the world, quite significant:
Sun Yat-sen was baptized a Christian in Hong Kong in 1887.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress
After many previously failed revolutionary attempts, Mr. Sun was able, by 1911, to summon enough organization and gumption among his countrymen to actually accomplish the liberation for which he had spent most of his life preparing.
How he did that amazing work, I don't know. As nearly as I can surmise from a little bit of incidental reading and a movie or two, his role in Chinese history is similar to George Washington's in our American story. But he was not a military man, as Washington had been. Sun was a thinker, a planner, but he was intelligent and perceptive enough to actually put his revolutionary thoughts and plans into effective action. As a result, he is the founder of the Republic of China. So, since he was not a military leader, I perceive that his role in China's liberation from feudalism is more akin to Thomas Jefferson's.
During his education here in Hawaii (where I am now writing), he became familiar with the writings of Jefferson and other proponents of freedom among the opinions of mankind.
Sun Yat-sen was not, however, a politician; his piloting of the fledgling republic was, I think, removed from his grasp during the 1920s and '30s, and supplanted by the chaotic joustings of military warlords. By the time he died in 1925, the nation was in disarray, and hobbled as a collection of feuding factions. When the Japanese invaded in 1937, the two main groups--Communists and Nationalists--had to make an uneasy truce to drive Hirohito's army out. After the war, Mao's People's Liberation Army were finally able to wrest power, by 1948, from Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang army, which Sun Yat-sen's comrades had formed during the 1911 revolution.
Thus did Mao Tse-dung, Deng Xiaoping, and other Communist leaders enforce, at long last, the People's Republic of China.
Not the same as the Republic of China (1911-1948). Nevertheless, it's all a progression of Chinese politics and military victories. From an optimistic American perspective, one might say that Deng Xiaoping had initiated another revolution, a relatively bloodless one (until June 4, 1989.)
As an American, I don't know much Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China, but I am happy to report that a very important part of his ideological development was accomplished during his youthful residence and education in Hawaii. Yat-sen's brother, Sun Mei had moved to Hawaii in 1879, prospered greatly, and was one of the richest men in Hawaii by the turn of the century. During those years, Mei saw to it that his younger brother was brought to the Islands to live in freedom and to be educated.
Sun Mei's wealth included 3900 acres of agricultural land on the slopes of Haleakala volcano (now dormant), on the island of Maui.
Two days ago, Pat and I drove through Sun Mei's formerly vast land-holdings, in the district of Maui called Kula. There, very near the old Sun Mei homeplace, we found this memorial, built to commemorate Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese Republic, who had spent many an hour, many a month over many years, there in reflection, respite, recreation and rest, before later going back to the Middle Kingdom and making world history.
I will end this brief historical observation with a fact that is, to me, and also (I hope) to the world, quite significant:
Sun Yat-sen was baptized a Christian in Hong Kong in 1887.
CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Lover Beach
The Ocean is tidy this morning.
the tide is half; the sun comes up
over the swells; Lanai and Molokai loom
across the choppy blue. Old Maui volcano sleeps,
cloudy and vast, heart of the island.
Come to the veranda; bright is the sky!
Always, from the breaking waves
where Pacific pelts this sun-kiss'd isle,
Listen! you hear the roaring power
of our planet that flings up watery wings
and pulls them down again on shifting sand.
Roar, and whisper, and roar again
with cyclical slumber to lose and win
a perpetual thrust of planetary din.
Poet Arnold felt it long ago
among the pebbles of Dover beach, summoning
the futile strands of faithlessness
and existential woe; I
find instead the inevitability of faith
called up to bloom upon this far-flung ocean isle.
The ocean of despair
so near and far in present past, to pound us down on human shores,
throws its tantrum of pointless angst, with cynic sand.
But now I only feel the wave of our resolve
upon a flagg'ed pole of hope,
advancing, in the sun-stirred air
of dawning day, o'er the bright edges of our vision,
as lilies of the field.
Ah, love, let us be true
to one another! for the world, which seems
to pound upon us like a surf of strife,
so relentless, so provocative, so hard,
has a terrible power all its own
that would dash our love and hope in forceful blight.
But we here on our sun-bathed isle,
caressed with waves of love and delight--
we subdue the heartless poundings of the night.
Glass half-Full
the tide is half; the sun comes up
over the swells; Lanai and Molokai loom
across the choppy blue. Old Maui volcano sleeps,
cloudy and vast, heart of the island.
Come to the veranda; bright is the sky!
Always, from the breaking waves
where Pacific pelts this sun-kiss'd isle,
Listen! you hear the roaring power
of our planet that flings up watery wings
and pulls them down again on shifting sand.
Roar, and whisper, and roar again
with cyclical slumber to lose and win
a perpetual thrust of planetary din.
Poet Arnold felt it long ago
among the pebbles of Dover beach, summoning
the futile strands of faithlessness
and existential woe; I
find instead the inevitability of faith
called up to bloom upon this far-flung ocean isle.
The ocean of despair
so near and far in present past, to pound us down on human shores,
throws its tantrum of pointless angst, with cynic sand.
But now I only feel the wave of our resolve
upon a flagg'ed pole of hope,
advancing, in the sun-stirred air
of dawning day, o'er the bright edges of our vision,
as lilies of the field.
Ah, love, let us be true
to one another! for the world, which seems
to pound upon us like a surf of strife,
so relentless, so provocative, so hard,
has a terrible power all its own
that would dash our love and hope in forceful blight.
But we here on our sun-bathed isle,
caressed with waves of love and delight--
we subdue the heartless poundings of the night.
Glass half-Full
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
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