A public conversation about our worlds.
October 19th, 2007 by 
Steven Gould
Each year in the first half of October over a hundred thousand people descend upon my city for the annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. I don’t know the statistics for this year, but in 2006 there were 700 balloons registered and when the wind is right, they float right overhead and land in the park behind my house.
Posted in Daily Life, Dogs, Fantasy, Health and Safety, Pop. Culture, Steve, Technology | 
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October 19th, 2007 by Bradley Denton
No one in this photograph exists. Not anymore.
Yet here they are. And I remember some of them even though I myself didn’t exist when the photo was taken.
There’s the grandmother I knew so well. And there beside her, in the plaid shirt, is the grandfather I never knew at all.
Yet as I look at the photo, I remember him too. Because even though this moment is long gone, here it is for me (and you) to see.
But the fact that you and I can see these people doesn’t mean that they currently exist. . . and we all know that. We recognize that this is a photographic image from the past, and that the moment it represents (as well as, in this case, everyone who participated in that moment) is gone.
We know how a camera works, and we know that the image a camera creates is not the moment itself. It is merely a representation of that moment. A memory.
Now consider your eye. Consider how the light reflecting off a loved one (or a rock, or a leaf, or a car on the freeway) enters your eye. Consider how that image is projected, upside-down, onto your retina.
Now consider how your optic nerve transmits the signals triggered by that image to your brain. Consider how that information spreads from neuron to neuron, over and over and over again, and how the vast wet computer in your skull flips the image so that you see it upright.
Consider then how still more webs of neurons in that vast wet computer process the image into your conscious knowledge of what it represents.
Consider then how still more webs of neurons determine what your reaction to the image should be, and how still more webs of neurons process and transmit the resulting commands through your nervous system to your muscles.
Consider how long that all takes.
Posted in Brad, Daily Life, People, Science, Science Fiction | 12 Comments »