THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/16/15 -- Vol. 33, No. 29, Whole Number 1841
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
What to Eat After the Apocalypse
Predictions (comments by Dale L. Skran)
Speaking in Someone Else's Voice (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
American Horror Story: Coven (television review
by Dale L. Skran)
PUMP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
SELMA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE MENTALIST (letter of comment by Dale L. Skran)
Rosetta, Pluto, and ECHOPRAXIA (letter of comment
by Gregory Benford)
This Week's Reading (ORAL BORGES) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: What to Eat After the Apocalypse
"A set of solutions that ... would provide five years of food for
the Earth's population" after something like a nuclear winter:
http://tinyurl.com/void-eat-after
I don't think they address the zombie apocalypse. :-) [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Predictions (comments by Dale L. Skran)
Dale Skran sends in two links, one from io9.com of predictions
that came true in 2014:
http://tinyurl.com/void-true-predictions-2014
and another of Yahoo's predictions for 2015:
http://tinyurl.com/void-predictions-2015
[-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Speaking in Someone Else's Voice (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
[P.S. This column came up a little short so let me ask a trivia
question on a related subject. Sir Anthony Hopkins is extremely
good at voice impressions. For the restoration of SPARTACUS he
dubbed the late Sir Laurence Olivier's voice in portions. When he
plays Hannibal Lector that eerie voice he uses is actually just his
normal voice impression of another actor. Who is the other actor?
The answer is at the end of this column.]
I recently got an answer to a question I had had been wondering
about for a long time.
In 2009 the right-wing Investors Business Daily bulletin
editorialized against the Affordable Care Act "explaining":
"The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
(NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a
cost-utility analysis based on the 'quality adjusted life year.'
"One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are
taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on.
"The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth
saving, and the likelier you are to get care.
"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in
the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of
this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is
essentially worthless."
Apparently this claim made the e-mail rounds until somebody read it
who knew at least some of the basics about Stephen Hawking.
If I were to name the first three characteristics of Stephen
Hawking that come to my mind when I think about him they would be
1) Brilliant physicist and cosmologist.
2) Afflicted with ALS and speaks with a voice synthesizer.
3) English.
In fact he is very, very English and always was. He went to both
Oxford and Cambridge and still teaches at the latter. So obviously
he spent his entire life in the United Kingdom under their health
care system. So it is obvious how much of a chance he would have
had in the United Kingdom with their health system because that was
exactly the chance he got. And he is perfectly happy with the
healthcare he received from their National Health Service.
I did not hear of all this until somebody had already exposed the
error. By then it was the object of some laughter that the
opponents of the Affordable Care Act who were using this argument
could so easily be shown to be spreading ignorance. Stephen
Hawking got involved making a statement that he had lived his
entire life under the UK healthcare system and that he held it in
high regard.
All this is old news.
Apparently some people were thinking that Hawking was from the
United States. I was puzzled why people might assume that Stephen
Hawking was an American. Well, it turns out there was probably a
good reason to make that mistake.
I got an answer reading "Science News"'s coverage of the film THE
THEORY OF EVERYTHING, a dramatization of chapters in the life of
Hawking. In the film Hawking gets his computer-synthesized voice
and it shocks his wife Jane. It seems the synthesizer was
developed in the United States. It has what we in the United
States consider to be a neutral accent. That is it has the same
pronunciation that national newscasters might use and which sounds
to us to be non-regional.
To someone who has lived most of his life in England, a region-
neutral American accent is a very pronounced American accent.
By now everyone who has heard Hawking use the synthetic voice
expects to here that Americanized voice. It is hard to think of
someone as really being the same person if he thoroughly takes on a
different accent as Hawking was at first forced to do.
There probably are by now synthesizers that sound like someone from
England, but people know the voice they are used to hearing.
People do not expect or want Hawking to have an English accent. He
feels like a genuinely different person if he has an American
accent. People make assumptions about you if you speak in only an
American accent. Americans may have a tendency to brashness, for
example, that is not expected from the British.
I think people like the Internet pundits just jump to the
conclusion that Stephen Hawking talks like an American so he must
be an American.
[Trivia question answer: Katherine Hepburn.]
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN (television review by Dale
L. Skran)
As you may or may not know, FX has been running a horror anthology
show titled AMERICAN HORROR STORY. Unlike past anthology shows,
where each episode is different, here each season tells a
completely different story, although sometimes sharing the same
actors in different roles. I'm not a big horror fan, but do make
exceptions when I find the story interesting. I'd seen a few
episodes of COVEN on TV, and recently decided to watch the entire
mini-series.
COVEN takes quite a bit from the X-Men. Instead of "Xavier's
School for Gifted Youngsters" we have "Miss Robichaux's Academey"
with headmistress Cordelia Foxx (Sarah Paulson) playing the Xavier
role. Both are crippled for much of the series--Xavier in this
wheelchair and Cordelia blinded. Her pupils include Zoe Benson
(Taissa Farminga), who has the not particularly useful power of
causing any man she has sex with to die of a brain hemorrhage, and
Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts), a Lindsey Lohan type with the
power of telekinesis. The two other pupils include human voodoo
doll Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe), a black girl of considerable girth,
and apparent very high-functioning Down's Syndrome case Nan (Jamie
Brewer) who has the power of "clairvoyance" (actually, mind
reading--COVEN uses the term incorrectly).
I'm not going to try and rehash the rather complex plot of the
series. The overall theme is that the current "Supreme" Fiona
Goode (Jessica Lange) is fading, and it is time to choose a new
leader. Alas, for a new Supreme to rise, the old must die--one way
or another. Thus begins a round of GAME OF THRONES power games as
the various potential Supremes try to out-do or even kill one
another, and the current Supreme tries to identify and eliminate
her replacement. The Supreme is nothing to be trifled with,
possessing the powers called "The Seven Wonders" which include
telekinesis, concilium (mind control), pyrokinesis, divination,
transmutation (actually teleportation), vitalum vitalis (heal and
raise the dead), and descensum (astral projection to Hell). These
are not the only powers witches possess in COVEN, but if you have
all seven, you are the Supreme. COVEN treats witchcraft as through
it has a genetic basis, and it should not surprise you that the
witches are hunted by male witch-hunters, and constantly set upon
by their magical rivals, the Voodoo practitioners led by Marie
Laveau (Angela Bassett), the immortal Voodoo queen.
Although COVEN follows the traditional Hollywood trope that in the
end evil is punished, this is a brutal and often hard to watch
series. Much of that brutality is perpetuated by Delphine LaLaurie
(Kathy Bates), a psychopathic immortal racist witch who had
dedicated herself to the torture of blacks. COVEN echoes the
traditional theme that "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts
absolutely" and no one is quite as corrupt as the current Supreme,
Fiona Goode, who is willing to do anything in her pursuit of
immortality. However, all the characters are coarsened to some
degree by what they are drawn to do as they pursue magic to its
ultimate ends. Zoe, for example, who is a sort of normal every
girl at the start, (1) resurrects a boy-toy in the Frankenstein
style, (2) leads two of the witches as they torture a servant [he
is a really foul fellow], (3) ultimately kills the servant by
stabbing, and (4) fights a horde of zombies with a chain saw. This
takes us through the first few episodes.
An interesting bit in COVEN is that Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac) [a
real person] appears in the series as herself, with the added
detail that she is a witch. One of the witches--Misty Day--is a
big fan of Stevie Nicks, and her music, including the songs
"Rhiannon" and "Seven Wonders," plays an important part in the
plot.
A good bit of the real horror in COVEN comes more from Fiona's
decline due to cancer than from chopped off arms and heads,
although there are a number of those. I'm not sure whether this is
a strongly feminist or a deeply misogynistic take on witchcraft.
It is certainly all about women--their fears, their hopes, their
dreams, and their weaknesses. Men are present, but play a
peripheral role in COVEN, often as loyal servants.
I'm not rating COVEN. This is strictly for adults--plenty of cable
TV sex and violence--I skipped over some scenes. The acting is
good, and the characters compelling. The overall story has many
intriguing aspects, although an honest evaluation would admit that
much of what is interesting in COVEN can be found in any X-MEN
comic. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: PUMP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The documentary PUMP looks at the political strength of
the petroleum corporations and gives the viewer a survey of already
available or near-available alternative fuels. In fact, there
seems to be an abundance of fuels superior to gasoline, and most
seem to be ready for use now or will be shortly. The film makes a
strong case that we should be converting over to use alternative
fuels. At least that case is convincing for this non-technical
viewer. While this is definitely a good time to be looking at fuel
alternatives that would mean less pollution, less greenhouse
emissions, and less cost at the pump, a large part of the argument
is that gasoline was over $3 a gallon at the pump and will never go
below $3 again. Of course, gasoline prices were well below that
level at the time of the film's release. PUMP was written by
Johnny O'Hara and directed by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell
Tickell. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
The United States is not alone in its loving relationship with
cars. Just about every country that goes from the bicycle stage of
affluence to the automobile stage goes through the same love
affair. The car does not only symbolize freedom and mobility, it
delivers on its promise. Countries in Asia just getting cars are
getting cars first and worrying about smog and global warming very
much less and very much later. This is a disaster for the
countries going through the transition and one for the rest of the
world. The overwhelming majority of cars run on gasoline, which is
an extremely dirty fuel. So why do we use it? PUMP gives the
background on the dispute going back to petro-founder John
D. Rockefeller and automobile inventor Henry Ford who favored
petroleum and electricity respectively. Today in the United States
the power of petro-dollars has blown down all political opposition.
PUMP illustrates the dangers of petroleum. It shows China and the
immense cloud of pollution that enshrouds cities like Beijing. The
cars that belch pollution also facilitate climate change. Their
huge financial resources for purchasing petroleum will dangerously
impact the world economy and politics. There is also a survey of
what has happened in Detroit when the demand fell badly for cars
that ran on previously cheap gasoline.
One problem for the filmmakers is the timing of their film release.
Their experts tell their viewer that Saudi Arabia has greater oil
supplies than the United States does and that gasoline is over $3 a
gallon and will stay there. The price of crude, they claim, is
going to go up to $140 and stay up there. Yes, at its height the
price of crude went up to $143 a barrel, but then it fell. At the
time of PUMP's release the price of crude was $48 a barrel. The
price of gasoline is under $2 a gallon. This is a matter of bad
luck, at least for the makers of this film. It does not mean that
their other arguments and predictions are incorrect, but to clearly
say that we will never see gasoline under $3/gallon, and then to
have it below $2/gallon just months later undermines their
arguments.
At about the halfway point the film shifts gears to listing the
successes from around the world in finding alternative fuel
sources. There is a profile of Elon Musk and his electric car, the
Tesla. They also show several other electric cars with promising
results.
Brazil has had great success with a car that runs on ethanol, a
fuel considered superior to gasoline. The process that creates the
ethanol also makes (as a by-product) cattle feed. The claim is
made that Brazil is comparable to the United States having a land
area nearly as large. It may well be nearly as large, but that is
misleading because so much of it is covered by rain forest.
Government studies are presented that showed bio-mass, something
that the United States has in abundance, can be used to make
methanol, a much cleaner fuel than gasoline. They move on to a
point that many cars apparently are already ready to accommodate
flex fuels (a combination of ethanol, methanol, and gasoline in any
proportions. It appears that many American cars sold are flex-
fuel-ready and many would have to have only minimal effort to make
them flex-fuel-ready.
The reason these cars are not using better fuels is not technical
but political. The Tickells, directors of the film, make a case
that the petroleum industry is making it illegal to use alternative
fuels even though it would be perfectly safe. At just short of 90
minutes there is plenty in this film that informative and more that
is infuriating. I rate PUMP a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2630916/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pump/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: SELMA (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: SELMA offers a look at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he
is tested in the complex politics of race in 1965 when he organized
the famous march from Selma, Alabama, to the State Capitol in
Montgomery. For history about half a century old, it still has the
power to enrage and enlighten. The film's style is not entirely
successful and sometimes gets in the way of the story-telling. But
it still is one of the better films of the year. Rating: low +2
(-4 to +4) or 7/10
Martin Luther King, Jr. (played in the film by English actor David
Oyelowo) was a great man who brought about monumental changes and
took part in monumental events. That does not make SELMA a great
film. As the only full-length feature film about King it is a
mixed bag. Told against a background of King being awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize (1964), the Birmingham church bombing (1963), and
the intentional disenfranchisement of black voters, this is the
story of how King went to Selma, Alabama, to organize and arrange
for the famous Selma-to-Montgomery March (1965). The latter
required a political game of chess-like complexity with Governor
George Wallace (Tim Roth) and with Lyndon Baines Johnson (Tom
Wilkinson).
SELMA is directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb. The
film wastes no time in grabbing and infuriating the viewer. In the
first minutes comes the first atrocious outrage and a second one
follows not long after. DuVernay and Webb immediately have any
viewer but the most hardened racist as angry as King is. Sadly,
too much of this film is of the format of King hearing of some turn
of events that aids the racists and he responds in conversation
with a reaction that is well-reasoned, but in the rhetoric of a
speech. The impression that one gets is that talking with King was
often a very tiresome and trying experience. Speech was King's
great forte--and one cannot leave the theater without being more
convinced that it was a stronger forte than one had thought--but it
does make this a rather talky film. While there are some exciting
sequences, in general SELMA is rather static.
There were two or three sequences that seemed to hark back to
recent films. In one, members of multiple activist groups descend
on the King household, presumptuously making themselves at home and
making themselves a meal. This was reminiscent of a sequence in,
of all films, THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. Perhaps it was
not the fault of the filmmakers, but we are introduced to many
characters and many different similar activist organizations that
are hard to keep straight. This situation is made even worse
because so little effort was made to make the characters look like
their real-life and familiar counterparts. Tom Wilkinson looks a
little like Johnson, but there is nothing about Tim Roth that
suggests George Wallace and Dylan Baker looks not at all like the
real J. Edgar Hoover.
Aspects of history are represented differently than their usual
public representation. Lyndon Johnson is remembered by many as
being strongly pro-civil-rights. Here he is most often
obstructionist trying to tread a middle ground between the beliefs
of King and of Wallace. Historically there was very strong support
for civil rights in the American Jewish community who saw the
necessity to support another oppressed people. While other
religions are shown explicitly supportive of the marches, there is
almost no mention of the Jewish commitment. There is no dialog
mentioning the close relationship of Blacks and Jews and there has
been reported only one fleeting image of a marcher in a yarmulke.
The film is heavily stylized with most indoor scenes with King shot
dimly with film noir lighting. Some of the dialog seemed mumbled,
which further obscured the storytelling. For some reason, after
some sequences we are shown a line reported by FBI operatives
reporting what we had just scene. They had quickly made the point
that the FBI was keeping a less than helpful eye on the freedom
demonstrations. But that could have been established with a single
line of dialog. Yes, the FBI is observing and just making notes
rather than participating. What is the point of telling us
repeatedly?
I cannot say I agree with all the style statements made by this
film, but the film does flesh out history. It is not honest about
everything it says, but it does not shy away from telling us of
King's faults as well as his virtues. I rate SELMA a low +2 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/selma/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE MENTALIST (letter of comment by Dale L. Skran)
In response to comments about THE MENTALIST in the 01/09/15 issue
of MT VOID (in response to his review in the 01/02/15) issue, Dale
L. Skran writes:
Someone asked which Mentalist episode was SF. Others speculated on
whether Jane really had super-powers or not. I addressed both
these issues in my essay "The Measure of the Man--The MENTALIST
Revisited" which appeared in the MT VOID (05/18/2012). I agree
that Jane is so smart and so skilled that it cannot be known
whether he has superhuman powers or not. All that can be said is
that he appears to be superhuman much of the time. If he really
did have powers, wouldn't it make his life a lot easier to pretend
that he didn't? It is also worth asking how smart you have to be
to be "superhuman"? If you review the accomplishments of someone
like John Von Neumann, you will see that the smartest human is very
smart indeed. Von Neumann is an interesting case since he was a
mathematician of profound skill, a world-changing engineer, and a
leader who could sway the US Government and more or less anyone he
wanted to do whatever he wanted--like build an H-bomb or a thinking
machine. Von Neumann was also well known for driving fast, exotic
cars and taking crazy risks while driving, reminding us a bit of
Jane's tendency toward excessive risks. And Jane may be some
unknown amount more capable--both in IQ and EQ. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Rosetta, Pluto, and ECHOPRAXIA (letter of comment by Gregory
Benford)
In response to Jim Susky's comments about space missions in the
01/09/15 issue of MT VOID, Gregory Benford writes:
I liked Jim Susky's letter. The big fact about the Rosetta mission
is that by following ESA policy they didn't use a nuclear decay
power source, and so had to manage cumbersome, heavy solar panels.
This led to myriad navigation problems and their ultimate failure--
bouncing the probe next to a cliff, so they get little power & the
lander mission is probably dead. ESA pays a high price for its
politics.
Great things to come from the Pluto New Horizons probe, rendezvous
in July flyby. [-gb]
And in response to Joe Karpierz's review of ECHOPRAXIA in the same
issue, Gregory writes:
Good review of ECHOPRAXIA--high-level hard SF indeed from Watts.
[-gb]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
ORAL BORGES by Jorge Luis Borges (ISBN 978-9-500-40110-4) is a
collection of transcripts of lectures given by Borges. I read it
as part of the omnibus MISCELANEA (ISBN 978-8-499-89204-7).
"The Book": This is Borges's paean to the book, both as the object
and the contents thereof. He says (in this lecture given in 1979)
that even though he is blind, he keeps buying books and filling his
house with books, because he can feel them there. He also contends
that, curiously, the iconic writers of many European countries are
atypical of those countries' cultures. More specifically, the
English are understated, while Shakespeare tends toward hyperbole;
the Germans are "easily fanatic", while Goethe is tolerant and
cares little for patriotism; and Victor Hugo is "un-French" in his
use of grand stage scenery and vast metaphors.
"Immortality": Borges notes that in Plato's dialogue of the death
of Socrates, the Phaedo, it is written that Plato was not present
("Plato, I believe, was sick"). Borges says he thinks Plato wrote
this as a way of saying, "I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly
what Socrates said, but I can imagine that this is what he said."
He cites Gustav Theodor Fechner as noting that just as fetuses have
fingers, eyes, and other body parts that are of no use to them in
the womb, but only in their life after birth, we have hopes, fears,
etc., that are of use only in an after-life. This Fechner (and
perhaps Borges) thinks is an argument in favor of immortality.
Borges himself says that if there is immortality, he does not want
to continue to be Borges, but to become someone else. Later in
talking about reincarnation (which would seem to be what he is
referring to), he says that the apparent paradox with the Hindu and
Buddhist belief that your fortune or misfortune in this life is
reward or punishment for your previous life is that it sets up an
infinite regression. But just as Pascal describes space as
infinite, with its circumference everywhere and its center nowhere,
so time can be considered similarly. And indeed the Hindus and
Buddhists believe in an infinite number lives for each soul.
Borges says, "Each time we repeat a verse of Dante or of
Shakespeare, we are, in some way, in that moment in which Dante or
Shakespeare created that verse." This reminds one of his story,
"Pierre Menard, Author of El Quijote". He then says, "In the end,
immortality is in the memory of others and in the work that we
leave behind." I'll note that Woody Allen disagrees with this,
having said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work;
I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
"Emanuel Swedenborg": Borges describes the philosophy of
Swedenborg, and in particular, elaborates on the subject of Heaven
(and Hell). According to Swedenborg, God allows Hell to exist
because only in Hell are the spirits of the damned happy. In
Heaven, they would be miserable. (Borges suggests the third act of
MAN AND SUPERMAN by George Bernard Shaw as a more eloquent
exposition than he can give.)
But also, Swedenborg says, to enjoy (or even appreciate) Heaven,
one cannot live the life of an ascetic on Earth. If one never
gains an appreciation of music in this life, one cannot enjoy the
heavenly choirs in the next. To one who has no understanding of
beauty on Earth, the Heaven will not seem beautiful either. And so
on.
As a side not, when reading a foreign language, one must beware of
false cognates. Borges writes that Jesus "ya no predicaba por
medio de palabras sino de parabolas," which I read as, "Jesus did
not preach with the medium of [mere] words but with parabolas."
This startled me, since I thought I would have noticed had Jesus
been preaching about parabolas and other geometric figures. A few
seconds' consideration, however, led me to realize that in this
case "parabolas" were not parabolas, but parables!
Borges speculates on why Swedenborg has had as little influence as
he has., and notes that it is part of a "Scandinavian destiny" to
have its great accomplishments ignored or forgotten. He notes, for
example, that the Vikings discovered America centuries before
Columbus, but nothing came of that and it was forgotten. The novel
was invented in Iceland with the saga (at least as Borges sees it),
but no one remembers that. Borges says that Charles Xii of Sweden
is forgotten while conquerors of far smaller empires are not
(though my brief investigation of Charles XII does not paint him as
an exceptionally successful conqueror).
"The Detective Story" ("El cuento policial"): After a brief
reference to Edgar Allan Poe as the originator of this genre,
Borges interrupts himself to ask whether there is such a thing as
genre? Benedetto Croce, in his "Aesthetics", claims not, saying
one might as well consider all yellow cups as forming a meaningful
subset of cups. However, Borges feels that the notion of genres
is useful, but that "literary genres depend, perhaps, less on the
texts than on the way in which they are read." This is basically
Samuel Delany's definition of science fiction by the way people
read it (i.e., the reading protocols). For example, when someone
reads the sentence "Her world exploded" in a science fiction novel,
they do not look for metaphorical meaning, but assume that he world
literally exploded, The zombies or dragons or meteors are not
metaphors, but are real zombies or dragons or meteors.
The effect of this perspective (according to Borges) is that we, as
readers of detective stories, are as much an invention of Poe as
the detective story itself.
It is interesting that what many people like most about the
Sherlock Holmes stories is the authentic Victorian (later
Edwardian) London ambiance, yet Borges feels that Edgar Allan Poe
had to crate a foreign detective rather than one working in (say)
New York in order to avoid people asking too many questions about
whether this was really how the (New York) police department
worked. It is true that Poe was blazing a trail, and by the time
Doyle entered the scene, the reader understood what was expected of
him in terms of reading protocols.
Borges sees the detective story as an intellectual exercise, and
says that while this is maintained in England, it has degenerated
in the United States with too much violence, too much blood, and
too much sex.
"Time" ("El tiempo"): Heraclitus said that no one can step in the
same river twice. Borges notes that this can be interpreted two
ways. The more common one is that it is because the river is
flowing and changing. Less common is that the consciousness and
being of the person is flowing and changing as well.
Time is ubiquitous. Borges quotes Tennyson: "Time is flowing in
the middle of the night."
Describing time is daunting. St. Augustine observed, "What is
time? If you do not ask me, I know. If you ask me, I do not
know."
He quotes Nicolas Boileau as writing (presumably in French), "El
tiempo pasa en el momento en que algo ya esta lejos de mi." (I
translate this as "Time passes in the moment in which something is
already far from me," but that cannot be right!)
"The present moment is made up of a little bit of the past and a
little bit of the future."
Two theories of time: it is like a river, flowing from the past to
the present, or that it is indeed the reverse, with the future
moving "backward" to become the present, and then the past. That
everyone accepts the image that the future is moving *backward*,
even when I am describing a philosophy in which that is the
direction of flow, indicates (to me, anyway) that we tend to feel
the first interpretation instinctively. (I will note in passing
that while in English we talking about the past being behind us and
the future before us, in some other languages, it is the reverse,
based on the quite rational argument that since we know the past,
it must be in front of us where we can see it.)
He discusses the proof that the cardinality of the even numbers is
equal to the cardinality of all the integers, but then later in
referring back to this, talks about the even integers and the odd
integers having the same cardinality. I think most people would
agree with the latter even if they find the former hard to believe.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they
wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're
going to feel all day.
--Frank Sinatra