Whoo-Hoo! Did you feel that? We just went around Darkness Corner. Not that circles have corners, but — zipping along at 67 thousand miles per hour — we just swung past the point of longest night and shortest day.
For those of us north of the equator anyway. Those of you below it must regret the days starting now to get shorter. My condolences. (If it’s any consolation, the Earth’s speed is 107 thousand kilometers per hour.) Naturally the Way-Back link is to the 2012 Winter Solstice post.
This empyrean reason for the holiday demands extra-special music…
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11 Comments | tags: B.B. King, Christmas, Christmas music, Eric Clapton, Lucille, Marry Christmas Baby, Ray Charles, Solstice, The Piano Guys, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, TSO, winter, Winter Solstice | posted in Music
After an analysis of Santa’s physical parameters, we’re still curious about the Claus. Does Santa, in fact, have claws? They would certainly help with chimneys. A question of quite some interest is: Does Santa have sex (in the biology class sense)? If so, ♂ or ♀?
The Way-Back link is to Santa: Man or Woman? It’s my only small claim to fame on WordPress — it’s the only post I’ve had Freshly Pressed! (How ironic it wasn’t a piece I actually wrote. It’s another fax or email “share” from the neolithic era of technology.)
And now, more music…
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11 Comments | tags: Blue Christmas, Christmas, Eric Clapton, funny, humor, Marry Christmas Baby, Mr Santa, Mrs Santa, Ms Santa, Robin Trower, Run Rudolph Run, Santa, Santa Claus, Santa female, Santa gender, Santa male, Sheryl Crow | posted in Music
Back in the days when fax machines were cool, “sharing” was a tiny trickle compared to the raging river of today. “Images” were black and white (not even grays) and 8.5″ x 11″ paper size. “Texts” were also that size, came in a variety of “fonts.” Both usually looked like something that had been photocopied 500 times.
Then as now there were gems. Here’s (a link to) one of them: Santa Claus: Fact or Fiction? It’s a trenchant treatise on the putative physical reality of Santa Claus. It considers some of the numbers involved, but I’ve never verified them, so be warned (38.5% of statistics are made up on the spot).
And now, today’s musical selections:
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5 Comments | tags: 12 Days of Christmas, Bruce Springsteen, Christmas, Christmas music, funny, humor, I'm a Believer, Marry Christmas Baby, Santa Claus, Santa Clause is Coming, Santa physics, Shrek, Smash Mouth | posted in Music
At this point in the season, various versions have already aired more than a few times, but tonight marks the first time for me to sit down and popcorn out on A Christmas Carol (by any other name). And sometime this week I’ll read the online version at Gutenberg. It’s one of my all-time favorite stories!
Today also marks the beginning of the one-week Christmas Countdown. Each day brings a short controversy-free, technology-free, gluten-free, fat-free, sugar-free, chemical-free free range Christmas post with a link back to a post from the Christmas Cycle in 2012. Considering the viewing schedule tonight, the link can only be to A Christmas Carol. (You can watch the Mr. Magoo version there!)
And each day, below the fold: Christmas Music!
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13 Comments | tags: A Christmas Carol, Ay Ay Ay It's Christmas, Bob Seger, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Christmas music, humor, Ricky Martin, Scrooge, The Little Drummer Boy | posted in Movies, Music
No doubt those who regard quantum physics or Einstein’s relativity or even just trigonometry as an impenetrable thicket of unknowable terms and ideas have a hard time believing science could be easy. The lingo alone seems to create an exclusive “members only” club.
The trick is: easy (or difficult) compared to what? Many scientists now disdain philosophy (apparently forgetting what we now call science was once called natural philosophy). They point to the advances of science in the last 500 (or whatever) years and then say that philosophy hasn’t been nearly as successful in 2000 years.
But that’s because science is easy. It’s philosophy that’s hard!
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54 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, CERN, epistemology, fireworks, Galileo Galilei, JFK Rice University speech, John F. Kennedy, Karl Popper, Large Hadron Collider, LHC, rockets | posted in Science
When, oh when, will I learn to keep my mouth shut! After going on about the unseasonably warm weather — three straight days with the temperature locked at 46-ish — and even posting pictures of the vanishing snow…
I wake to what you see here, plus a 25-degree drop in temperature. My (currently still working) indoor-outdoor digital temperature gizmo tells me it’s currently 21 (point nine) outside. Said gizmo also tells me the high today was 32 (point whatever), which was probably at midnight.
So, Hello Winter, I see you found us again. Now go away!
11 Comments | tags: cold, grey skies, snow, temperature, winter | posted in Life
You, dear reader, might wonder about the #2 in today’s title. Obviously, it signifies a second, so you may wonder wither the first. That one wasn’t in the normal catalog, but in Brain Bubbles, and it is, in fact, misfiled due to my own historical lack of precision about what belongs in that catalog. Full-length articles about movies do not.
So today’s post, another meander through three (recommended) movies, two TV shows (one recommended, one not), and a commemoration of the end of a great (cable) TV show, goes in the main catalog where it belongs.
Truth be told, I just couldn’t come up with a better title.
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4 Comments | tags: Aaron Sorkin, Babylon 5, Castle (TV series), Forever (TV series), Johannes Vermeer, Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers, Saving Mr. Banks, State of Affairs (TV series), The Newsroom (TV series), Tim Jenison, Tim's Vermeer, Video Toaster, Walt Disney, Whatever Works, Woody Allen | posted in Movies, TV
Sometimes, when discussing the possible existence of God (or Gods), there is the question: “Where is the evidence God exists?” One problem with that question is that different groups (believers and non-believers) are seeking different kinds of evidence. It’s a bit like how different groups — often the same two groups — get stuck on meanings of the word “theory.”
Evidence can be probative, circumstantial or even merely suggestive. When it comes to the question of God, some require probative evidence to prove God’s existence. Others, believing faith is central to belief, require only circumstantial or suggestive evidence.
Here are some thoughts about evidence I find suggestive.
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28 Comments | tags: awe, beauty, belief, Cape Canaveral, circumstantial evidence, Death Valley, evolution, God, Mallory Square, Mt. Everest, North Pole, probative evidence, South Pole, starry sky, suggestive evidence | posted in Music, Religion
Today is a date most folks living in the USA write as 12-13-14, and for anyone who loves numbers a date like that demands a post of some sort. I’d planned to goof off today, maybe catch up on some movies, but there’s just no way I won’t post on a date with a sequence like that.
Of course, others write today’s date as 13-12-14, but they’re not from around here. And there’s just no helping those who insist on writing 2014. The real error is putting the year last — the sensible way is 14-12-13, which allows proper sorting of dates chronologically. We should all change to that immediately.
If it’s not obvious yet, today is just a meandering ramble.
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2 Comments | tags: Cirocco Jones, climate change, female characters, fitted sheets, folded sheets, girl power, global warming, grey skies, humor, John Varley, melting snow, Numberphile, Santa Claus, science fiction, science fiction movies, snow, Titan trilogy, USAnian, winter | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday
One of the things I mentioned in my recent Material Disbelief post was that, if you accept everything physics has discovered in the last 100 years or so — and if you believe in philosophical materialism — you are faced with the very strong possibility that all of reality is some sort of simulation or machine process.
Not only does all the evidence, as well as some basic logic, seem to point in that direction, but as a model of reality it provides easy answers to many of the conundrums of modern physics (e.g. Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” and some basic questions regarding the Big Bang).
Today I want to lay out the details of the arguments for this.
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31 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, Bell's Theorem, DisneyQuest, DNA, EPR paper, Leopold Kronecker, materialism, metaphysics, Philosophical materialism, physicalism, reality, simulations, virtual reality, Zeno's paradoxes | posted in Physics
Logos con carne 