Tag Archives: time

Writing or Art? Mel Bochner’s “LANGUAGE IS NOT TRANSPARENT” (1970)

Is it art? Is this the sort of art one passes by impatiently as not really art? Notice that it has no conventional images in it, such as, say, a Madonna with child. Where Mary and the baby Jesus might … Continue reading

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Does Time Exist? Einstein, Julian Barbour, Lee Smolin, Some Greek Philosophers–And The New Data From The NASA Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope

Julian Barbour, Albert Einstein, and Parmenides vs. Anaximander and Lee Smolin. Theoretical physicist, Julian Barbour, believes that what we experience as time passing actually consists of frozen moments of space-time in relation to one another (akin to a flip book). It … Continue reading

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13.7 Billion Years Divided By 365: 40 Million Years Is A Day; A Day, 40 Million Years

In the debut episode of the new Cosmos series, hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hand Stuever of The Washington Post describes the football field sized cosmological calendar that Tyson uses to put our 13.7 billion-year-old big bang universe into time … Continue reading

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Monet’s Waterlilies and Some Free Association

A nice image of Monet’s waterlilies, c. 1915, via Wikipedia Commons: __________ The feel of this image for me is not of tranquility and coolness, but of heat and melting. First there is the white flower echoing a fried egg; … Continue reading

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Saint Ranieri, Meet George Jetson: Deconstruction Illustrated with a Catholic Painting

__________ What is deconstruction? In postmodern theory, deconstruction (in a nutshell) is the undoing of an author’s controlling intentions by time and audience reception. This can only happen because texts are made of parts, not coherent wholes. Over time, parts … Continue reading

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Does This Image Debunk Evolution?

A pastor in Colorado apparently thinks the above image scores big points against evolution, writing the following: This snowflake was photographed in Russia. Is this not a most amazing picture? Let’s see, this is either the result of evolution or … Continue reading

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You’re a Weirdo

__________ Jim Morrison was born in 1943. That means that, had he lived to 2013, he would be turning 70 this year. That’s a weird thought.

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Time and Space, or Poetry and Art

In Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (1729-1781) Laocoon, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766), there is a key insight: with regard to time and space, poetry and art function differently. A poem must necessarily be read in time and … Continue reading

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What Would It Mean To Live For Eternity?

When you think about it, all you ever really have is the present, which the poet William Blake called “the moving image of eternity.” You recall the past in present memory and you model and anticipate the future in present … Continue reading

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A Great Poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It’s her first sonnet in Sonnets from the Portuguese : I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, … Continue reading

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Question of the Day

If Adam or Eve, in the Garden of Eden, had cut down a tree, would they have discovered that it possessed tree rings? Image source: Wikipedia Commons.

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Dear Photograph: A Fascinating New Website

Contributers to the new site called “Dear Photograph” align old photographs with their points of origin, then retake the images. The achieved result is the display of people ghost-haunting, as it were, places in which they are no longer present (either because they have … Continue reading

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Ghosts of whales and time?

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Pretty Good Reasons Not to Believe in God Watch: Time and Chance—and Space!—Happeneth to Them All

I’ve never heard it put quite this way, and I know that it is implied within numerous arguments for atheism, but I think, by just making it explicitly present to consciousness, that this is a pretty good reason to doubt God’s existence: … Continue reading

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Why Do We Have Space Diets, But Not Time Diets?

Nearly everybody, it seems, wants to take up less space in the universe (that is, be skinny), but almost nobody wants to take up less time in the universe (that is, die soon). But both space and time are just dimensions, … Continue reading

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On Entropy, the Goddess Fortuna, and the Malice of Others: My Favorite Arthur Schopenhauer Quote

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote this in his “The World as Will and Representation” (Dover Edition, vol. 1, p. 88): “For whenever a man in any way loses self-control, or is struck down by a misfortune, or grows angry, or loses heart, … Continue reading

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Cosmological Natural Selection and the Timeless Block Universe? Maybe All Bullshit, Says Physicist Lee Smolin

Famed multiverse theorist, physicist Lee Smolin, in a recent essay, says he isn’t sure whether he even believes in his own multiverse hypothesis anymore, but he does give it credit for having some predictive power and experimental support: An alternative … Continue reading

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What is Time?

Is time an illusion in the way that our perception of the earth at rest is an illusion? Below is an interesting and brief documentary on time (in three parts). Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: And here’s physicist Julian … Continue reading

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What are the Implications of the Block Universe for Atheism? In Other Words, If We Live in a Block Universe, Wouldn’t That Make Our Universe the Ultimate Flash-Assembled 747?

One thing that atheism seems to need is time for the simplest elements of existence at the Big Bang to evolve into all that we see around us. But here’s a quote from the physicist Paul Davies on the block universe: … Continue reading

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You Are Here

NASA produced “universe extension timeline”: This is the universe we live in. And there might be others. See here and here.

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