Find the Perimeter!

Note: the lines on the drawing are not to scale.

Earthrise: "Riders on the Earth Together"

The words in the image above were written by the American poet Archibald MacLeish upon seeing the imagery coming from the Apollo 8 mission (the famous Earthrise image, accompanying the quote above, was taken just the day before MacLeish's quote was published).

Seeing our world from space, seeing that there are no national boundaries, no grand positions for monarchs and rulers to claim, seeing that we are all connected by sharing our beautiful little Blue Marble in the vastness of space... comes with an existential awareness that could be gained in no other way. 

Seeing ourselves as "riders on the Earth together" brings us together in our shared experience as members of our world, participants in our biosphere. 

---

Below, you can read the entire text from MacLeish's 1968 New York Times article:

A Reflection: Riders on Earth Together, Brothers in Eternal Cold
by Archibald MacLeish
New York Times, December 25, 1968

"Men's conception of themselves and of each other has always depended on their notion of the earth. When the earth was the World -- all the world there was -- and the stars were lights in Dante's heaven, and the ground beneath men's feet roofed Hell, they saw themselves as creatures at the center of the universe, the sole, particular concern of God -- and from that high place they ruled and killed and conquered as they pleased.

And when, centuries later, the earth was no longer the World but a small, wet spinning planet in the solar system of a minor star off at the edge of an inconsiderable galaxy in the immeasurable distances of space -- when Dante's heaven had disappeared and there was no Hell (at least no Hell beneath the feet) -- men began to see themselves not as God-directed actors at the center of a noble drama, but as helpless victims of a senseless farce where all the rest were helpless victims also and millions could be killed in world-wide wars or in blasted cities or in concentration camps without a thought or reason but the reason -- if we call it one -- of force.

Now, in the last few hours, the notion may have changed again. For the first time in all of time men have seen it not as continents or oceans from the little distance of a hundred miles or two or three, but seen it from the depth of space; seen it whole and round and beautiful and small as even Dante -- that "first imagination of Christendom" -- had never dreamed of seeing it; as the Twentieth Century philosophers of absurdity and despair were incapable of guessing that it might be seen. And seeing it so, one question came to the minds of those who looked at it. "Is it inhabited?" they said to each other and laughed -- and then they did not laugh. What came to their minds a hundred thousand miles and more into space -- "half way to the moon" they put it -- what came to their minds was the life on that little, lonely, floating planet; that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night. "Is it inhabited?"

The medieval notion of the earth put man at the center of everything. The nuclear notion of the earth put him nowhere -- beyond the range of reason even -- lost in absurdity and war. This latest notion may have other consequences. Formed as it was in the minds of heroic voyagers who were also men, it may remake our image of mankind. No longer that preposterous figure at the center, no longer that degraded and degrading victim off at the margins of reality and blind with blood, man may at last become himself.

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold -- brothers who know now they are truly brothers." 

Humanity, Technology, and an "Einstein Quote" that Einstein Never Said.

From the film Powder (1995). #film #movie #quote #powder #jeffgoldblum #seanpatrickflanery #EinsteinNeverSaidThat #humanity #technology #spirituality #lightning

A post shared by Graham Lau (@cosmobiologist) on Nov 17, 2017 at 6:18pm PST

I was recently thinking about the film Powder. Released in 1995 and starring Sean Patrick Flannery, Mary Steenburgen, Jeff Goldblum, and Lance Henriksen, Powder was about a young albino man, nicknamed Powder, with unique capabilities of intellect, telepathy, and paranormal ability. The man is an outcast due to his differences, and the film explores some of his interactions with others. The tagline for the film was "An extraordinary encounter with another human being!". Here's the trailer for the film:

It's definitely worth a watch. I remember being quite moved by it when I was a kid (I was 12 when the film came out). There's one scene in particular that stuck with me and comes up in my thoughts from time-to-time. Jeff Goldblum's character, Donald Ripley, is supportive of Powder and awed by Powder's abilities. In the scene that I still remember so well, the following exchange is had between the two of them:

Donald Ripley: “It’s become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.”

Powder: “Albert Einstein.”

Donald Ripley: “I look at you, and I think that someday our humanity might actually surpass our technology.”

Beautiful, right?! I loved that scene as a kid, and I still love it now. However, something very interesting that I just learned is that the first part of the quote ("It's become appallingly clear...") isn't actually a quote from Albert Einstein!

Folks at Quote Investigator and Snopes have tried to track down this claimed Einstein quote and have found that the first instance of the quote in known history actually is the movie Powder! The quote was written into the script as being from Einstein even though it wasn't actually an Einstein quote. Later, due to the film, others began using the quote and misattributing it to Einstein (such as DeAnna Emerson’s "Mars/Earth Enigma: A Sacred Message to Mankind" in 1996 and Nina L. Diamond's "Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers, and Healers" in 2000).

It's still a great quote and a moving sentiment. It reminds me of what I found to be the most powerful line in Martin Luther King Jr.'s essay "The World House":

"When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men."

Of course, the quote from Powder sounds like something that Albert Einstein would have said. And, even though I think it's good to be aware of things like misattribution, there's also something interesting about how we often will begin building legends around famous people from our past (and even present) and can slowly attribute talents, spoken words, and acts to those legends that may not have been true of the actual people the legends are based on. 
Maybe it doesn't matter that Einstein never actually said that. Maybe part of the legend of Einstein, the myth of the man, is that we build him up and attribute sayings and deeds to him that weren't really his. Even though I prefer knowing the truth in this instance, it might just be part of our human nature that we build our legends up in such ways. It's definitely something to ponder.


I'll leave you here with a quote that is pretty surely actually from Einstein:

"The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."

(Of course, many have shortened the quote to say "The value of an education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think". Oh well.)

Wise Words from My Sister, on Love and Hate

My sister, Kelsey Lau

"I was going through some books today and stumbled upon my copy of Ellie Wiesel's book, Night, his autobiographical novel about his experience in the Holocaust.

His passing and the current political climate of the US prompts me to remind everyone that fear is often the greatest motivator of hate, and we have not been in short supply of either through the recent preliminary elections.

There will always be fear; hate will always fester, and you will always be challenged to lend the brightest of your light to the darkness. Just remember that it is you who makes the choice to either succumb to the things you fear or rise to meet them, and it is your responsibility to decide who it is you want to be and how you want to affect the world around you.

Maybe it's time for people to either revisit or experience for the first time the words and testaments of people like Wiesel, who have seen some of the worst of humankind, to remember why, when we are taught to love, there is a wisdom passed to us from lives we've never lived.

Be intelligent. Be informed. Do not let anyone tell you what to believe. Even me. But remember, you make a choice to react to the world in the way you do, and I sincerely hope that the choice you make is the one you think should ripple in this world. I hope you see the significance of the passing of Ellie Wiesel and realize how recent in history it was that hate was chosen over love, and decide whether you want to be the person who carries that consciousness with them or not."

Kelsey Lau (5 July 2016)

A recent photo of (left-to-right) Nick Ison, Kelsey, Me, and Ben Doyle.
Out for beers and memory making.

Deep Songs, by elreviae

Image by elreviae at Deviant Art

A Dream Within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Sometimes our reflections of our own lives can lead us to find surprising things. Some of those things we cherish, some of those things make us feel guilty, some of those things seem like they should've been in someone else's life, not our own. I'm having just such a moment of reflection, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite poems. Enjoy.

A Dream Within a Dream

            By Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?